When the lights came back on at the Venice screenings of Kaouther Ben Hania’s latest film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, the audience seemed suspended in silence—before erupting into an extended, heartfelt ovation. For ninety minutes, no one stirred, no one whispered, not even a cough disturbed the darkness. Instead, tears fell quietly, building to a tidal wave of emotion that finally broke into applause. This was not a casual response, but a collective reckoning with a story that pierces the conscience.
At its core is the haunting voice of a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, who found herself trapped in a car riddled with bullets as her family fled the bombardment of Gaza on January 29, 2024. Hind’s desperate phone calls to the Palestinian Red Crescent—her only lifeline—form the beating heart of the film. That fragile voice is not just heard; it is felt. It transcends the screen, transforming cinema from aesthetic expression into a call for responsibility.
Ben Hania, celebrated for her ability to weave documentary and fiction into hybrid storytelling, pushes those boundaries further here. By blending real audio recordings with dramatized reenactments, she creates a film that refuses to remain confined within any single genre. The result is a powerful, unflinching meditation on helplessness, bureaucracy, and the unbearable weight of waiting.
The story unfolds inside the Red Crescent call center, 83 kilometers away from Gaza. Viewers watch as medics—portrayed by Sajaa Kilani, Motaz Malhis, Clara Khoury, and Amer Hlehel—grapple with mounting frustration and despair. Their only connection to Hind is a fragile phone line, repeatedly interrupted, while the possibility of dispatching an ambulance is mired in permits, approvals, and the cruel machinery of occupation. A journey that should have taken minutes stretches endlessly, symbolized by a digital map whose broken line mirrors a faltering heartbeat.
What makes The Voice of Hind Rajab so extraordinary is its restraint. Ben Hania does not sensationalize tragedy or stage death as spectacle. Instead, she turns the camera toward absence—toward silence, pauses, and the suffocating weight of time itself. The phone’s unanswered rings, the child’s uneven breathing, and above all the silence, become the film’s true protagonists.
By centering the very sound of Hind’s plea, Ben Hania elevates cinema into a moral space, one where the audience cannot simply watch and move on. The film insists on memory, on empathy, on recognition. It is at once a cinematic experiment and a deeply human testimony—a reminder that behind every headline lies a voice, a child, a story that demands to be heard.
In Venice, that voice broke through. It silenced skepticism, disarmed critique, and left audiences in tears. The Voice of Hind Rajab is not only a film—it is an echo that lingers, a wound that insists on being seen, and most importantly, a voice that will not be silenced.
TunisianMonitorOnline (Douha Essafi)
