A film that undoes you through the unbearable intimacy of a child’s voice

Review
By Editor_1
Saja Kilani as Rana Hassan Faqih and Motaz Malhees as Omar A. Alqam play the call centre operators who stay on the line with Hind, conveying the particular anguish of people fighting every rule, every protocol, every bureaucratic wall, against a clock they know is running out- firstshowing.net
-firstshowing.net

A review of The Voice of Hind Rajab

By Hana Ibrahim

COLOMBO – There are films that disturb you. And then there are films that undo you. The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, belongs to the second category. And it does so not through spectacle, but through the unbearable intimacy of a child’s voice.

The film, which had its Sri Lankan premier at the Majestic Cineplex, Colombo 4, on Thursday (18), courtesy the Embassy of the State of Palestine, Sri Lanka Committee for Solidarity with Palestine and Ceylon Theatres (Pvt) Ltd., follows the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s response to an emergency call received on January 29, 2024. A six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, is trapped inside a car in Gaza, surrounded by the bodies of her family members, under live Israeli military fire. She is calling for help. On the other end of the line, Red Crescent operators are doing everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Every movement of that ambulance requires coordination with, and clearance from the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), with Gaza Health Ministry, and in this instance, the Red Cross, as the intermediary. That detail alone, that a rescue vehicle cannot move to save a dying child without the permission of the army that is killing her, is the film’s most damning structural fact, and Ben Hania never lets the audience forget it.

The film combines archival audio from Hind’s actual distress call with dramatic recreations of the call centre workers who try to reach her, made in close collaboration with Hind’s family and the Palestine Red Crescent Society. The result is something almost unbearably raw. The use of Hind’s real voice could easily have felt exploitative, but instead it becomes the source of the film’s unbearable power. The dramatized framework draws viewers in with the shape and urgency of a thriller, only to leave them face to face with something that cannot be processed as ordinary cinema. Ben Hania is not softening reality through fiction; she is using fiction to make reality impossible to keep at a distance.

Emotionally, the film operates at a register few directors dare to sustain. There is no catharsis here, no release valve, no moment where the tension breaks and the audience is permitted to exhale. It relies on claustrophobic framing, muted lighting, and long takes that create a feeling of being trapped, mirroring Hind’s own situation. The editing is deliberate and slow, making viewers feel the weight of time. Every second stretching unbearably. Sound design becomes the film’s most powerful instrument: the silences between words, the distant percussion of shelling, and Hind’s voice, small, bewildered, terrifyingly calm at moments, carry a weight that no score could replicate.

The performances are deeply affecting. Saja Kilani as Rana Hassan Faqih and Motaz Malhees as Omar A. Alqam play the call centre operators who stay on the line with Hind, conveying the particular anguish of people fighting every rule, every protocol, every bureaucratic wall, against a clock they know is running out. Amer Hlehel as Mahdi M. Aljamal and Clara Khoury as Nisreen Jeries Qawas lend the ensemble a lived authenticity. These are not heroes given moments of triumph, but ordinary people ground down by an extraordinary and unconscionable situation. The tears that come in this film are not induced by manipulation; they arrive because there is simply nowhere else for the grief to go.

The ambulance, when it is finally dispatched, with IDF clearance, following procedure, does not reach Hind. It is bombed. The two paramedics inside are killed. Their vehicle is destroyed. The IDF, which required its clearance before the ambulance could move, killed it once it moved. This is not a plot device. It happened. The film does not editorialize; it does not need to. The facts, presented with documentary precision and dramatic weight, carry an authority that no polemic could match. And they point directly to the question of culpability that the international community has so far refused to answer.

What elevates The Voice of Hind Rajab from powerful filmmaking to essential filmmaking is its refusal to present this story as exceptional. Hind’s name has become known to the world. Her voice has been heard. But the film, which has achieved massive international critical acclaim and secured several prestigious global accolades,  is suffused with the awareness that she is one child among thousands, that what happened to her on January 29, 2024 was not an aberration but an iteration. The structures that killed Hind Rajab, the permission systems, the targeting, the bombed ambulances, the denial of humanitarian access, are not failures of procedure. They are the procedure, repeated daily across Gaza. As Saja Kilani said at Venice on behalf of the filmmaking team: “Hind’s story carries the weight of an entire people. Her voice is one amongst thousands of children who lost their lives in Gaza.”

The Voice of Hind Rajab is one of the most emotionally shattering films in recent memory. It demands to be seen, but viewers should be prepared for its unflinching intensity and the devastating weight of the true events at its core. That weight does not lift when the credits roll. It was never meant to.

–The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) is the winner of the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize & CICT-UNESCO Enrico Fulchignoni Award at the Venice International Film Festival, Audience Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Audience Award for International Feature at the Middleburg Film Festival, Silver Hugo Jury Prize at the Chicago International Film Festival and Main Prize at the Brussels Section at the One World Festival. It was also Nominated for Best International Feature Film at 98th Academy Awards. Sri Lanka audiences will have the opportunity to experience The Voice of Hind Rajab at Regal Cinemas across the country over the new few weeks

Editor_1

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