The Voice of Hind Rajab

On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent volunteers in Gaza received a desperate call from a family trapped in a car under Israeli military fire. Moments later, only six-year-old Hind Rajab remained on the line, begging to be rescued. As paramedics had been killed in the area days earlier, the Red Crescent was forced to navigate a maze of military and governmental approvals before a rescue attempt could even be considered. Hind stayed on the call, scared and alone, as dispatchers tried to help.

Academy Award–nominated director Kaouther Ben Hania’s urgent and devastating The Voice of Hind Rajab recreates this emergency as a powerful narrative work using actual call recordings and scripted re-enactments based on first-hand testimonies and transcripts. Employing a hybrid documentary-fiction creative approach she also explored in her acclaimed Four Daughters (TIFF ’23), Ben Hania begins scenes with archival images and voices before gradually transitioning into the performances — actors matching the appearance and manner of the real dispatchers, often in the same physical space. The technique is poignant and haunting, revealing what lies behind the dramatization.

What follows is a compelling and tense, single-location drama, where the dispatchers juggle protocol, panic, and moral urgency, trying to comfort Hind while negotiating an impossible reality. Even though we know the heartbreaking outcome, that Hind was killed by Israel’s military, Ben Hania builds unbearable suspense and a tragic sense of helplessness — a testament to an innocent life lost and the people who tried to save her.

ANITA LEE

Content advisory: violence, mature themes