‘The Voice Of Hind Rajab’ review: Kaouther ben Hania revisits 2024 death of a six-year-old in Gaza

Dir/scr: Kaouther ben Hania. Tunisia/France. 2025. 89mins.

On January 29th, 2024, the world heard the voice of six-year-old Hind Rajab, trapped in a car in Gaza alongside the bodies of six members of her family and pleading for a rescue that never came. Tunisian director Kaouther ben Hania’s wrenching and distressing dramatisation of the events, told from the point of view of the Palestine Red Crescent volunteers who took her call, uses the actual recordings of Hind’s voice. It’s a decision which brings a devastating power to the film – which was made with the suport of Hind’s mother – but also one which raises uncomfortable ethical questions about consent and the right to privacy, in life and in death. 

The boundaries between fiction and reality are permeable throughout

This is the latest of several films by ben Hania that blur the lines between fiction and documentary, with the most recent being Four Daughters, her deft Oscar-nominated hybrid picture about radicalisation within a family. The Voice Of Hind Rajab lacks some of that film’s teasing formal complexity, but makes up for it with its urgency and immediacy. It should match or perhaps even surpass Four Daughters’ festival success and theatrical journey. An inevitable talking point picture, The Voice Of Hind Rajab sold to multiple territories in advance of its premiere in competition in Venice and subsequent screenings in Toronto and London. Support from high profile executive producers, including Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonathan Glazer and Alfonso Cuaron, should further bolster its profile.

Hind, her aunt, uncle and four cousins were evacuating from the Al Hawa neighbourhood, in accordance with an order from the Israeli military. But the vehicle came under tank fire, eventually killing all but Hind. Volunteers from Palestine Red Crescent – part of an international humanitarian aid network and allied with the Red Cross – are first alerted to the Hind’s plight via a call from Omar (Motaz Malhees), an uncle in Germany. The operator who takes the first call initially speaks to Hind’s older cousin, and is profoundly shaken when he hears a round of artillery fire and then silence.

The single location thriller, told from the point of view of the emergency response phone operators, is a proven technique which has already been used to powerful effect in films such as Gustav Moller’s The Guilty and Caroline Bartleet’s BAFTA-winning short film Operator. It’s an effective device, allowing the story to play out in the faces of the volunteers who find themselves running up against Kafka-esque layers of bureaucracy and red tape in their quest to send help to Hind.

To recreate the chain of events that led to Hind’s death and the two ambulance drivers dispatched to rescue her, ben Hania drew on around seventy minutes of recorded telephone conversations between Hind and the volunteers. She also interviewed the Red Crescent operators who spoke to her, digging into the considerable emotional toll of the experience. Actors speak the words that their real life characters delivered, opposite the recording of Hind’s voice. The boundaries between fiction and reality are permeable throughout, with some shots juxtaposing actors against phone camera footage of the real life characters that they portray. For the most part, it works very effectively, although the snippets of real life phone footage are a little distracting, jolting us out of the nervy chokehold of the story.

Of the four main characters, Omar is the most fiery, his frustration at the lack of action erupting in bursts of impotent anger. Mahdi (Amer Hlehel), who is responsible for coordinating the rescue, is more cautious. He has a memorial wall of photos of ambulance drivers who have been killed on the job and he doesn’t want to risk adding to it. Empathetic Rana (Saja Kilani) takes the lead in talking to the terrified little girl; Red Crescent supervisor Nisreen (Clara Khoury) steps in when the stress on her colleagues pushes them to breaking point.

There are moments when the pitch of this behind-the-scenes tension feels a little over-cooked. In contrast, the quiet, somber devastation that closes the picture is almost unbearable in its poignancy.