There can be no doubt about which movie has set the Venice film festival ablaze – it is this one, from Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania. The Voice of Hind Rajab is about the horrifying ordeal of the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza in her uncle’s car along with six family members, and two paramedics who tried to come to her rescue. Rajab herself, who survived the original assault by the IDF which killed those around her, stayed on the phone for hours to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), desperately begging for help. With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heart-wrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to Rajab’s actual voice.
The result was greeted with a 23-minute standing ovation at Venice, about a quarter of the film’s running time, with journalists and festival attenders reportedly sobbing in the auditorium. Since that passionate reception, others have wondered if there is not something questionable or exploitative in presenting this authentic shattering recording in a Hollywoodised suspense drama, getting actors to cry and rage alongside a kind of docufictional hologram, almost instructing the audience in how they too should be responding. I wonder. Perhaps Ben Hania’s high-concept idea is debatable, and it might have been just as moving to present this extraordinary real-life recording in the straightforward documentary context of interviews with the responders and emergency workers. This might have made clearer what happened from their point of view, why they were impeded from helping Rajab and what continues to hinder them.
