On Jan. 29, 2024, five-year-old Hind Rajab and her family attempted to flee Gaza City. Israeli forces opened fire on them, killing almost all of the occupants of the car immediately. But Hind lived, and spent hours trapped in that car on the phone with emergency workers, waiting for an ambulance to come and save her while still under fire. Twelve days later, Hind — still in the car — was found dead.
Like so many in the world, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania first heard Hind Rajab’s voice when the Palestinian Red Crescent Society — who, while on the phone with Hind, worked tirelessly to coordinate safe passage for an ambulance to her location — published audio of their phone calls with her online. Listening to Hind’s pleas for help, Ben Hania felt like the little girl was speaking directly to her. She poured the immediacy of that emotion into her new film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which dramatizes the events of that day from the perspectives of the Red Crescent workers who tried to save Hind.
The film both confronts you directly with the reality of Hind’s murder and emphasizes the frustration of distance. Ben Hania uses the real recording of Hind Rajab’s voice and mixes the voices and likenesses of the actors with their real life Red Crescent counterparts. The film primarily takes place at the Red Crescent headquarters in Ramallah, about 50 miles away from Gaza. The helplessness of these workers as they try to reassure Hind over a spotty phone connection, while simultaneously having to convince the Israeli Army to let them save her life, is potent.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” has faced criticism for Ben Hania’s decision to use Hind’s voice, but the director thought long and hard about how to tell such a crucial story without wading into murky waters of exploitation and sensationalism. I recently spoke with her about her decision-making process and why Hind’s story needed to be told now. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I was reading a lot about your previous film, “Four Daughters.” Conceptually, there are some similarities between those two films, as far as mixing real people with actors, and bringing in real elements of the story that you’re telling into the world of the movie and breaking that wall. With this movie for me, that was a really stark reminder of the reality of the story you’re telling, but I don’t necessarily think all movies have to do that to achieve that goal. For you, what is that artistic choice like, wanting to combine those two elements, and what are you reaching for with that?
Kaouther Ben Hania: To answer this question, I have to go back to the first time I heard her voice — the voice of Hind Rajab — which was on the internet. I believe that cinema is about emotion, and when I feel something very strong as a filmmaker, my goal or my job is to share it with the audience. So the first time I heard her voice, she was alive. She was speaking to someone — to me, in a way — begging for life. There was something very immediate, in the present tense, in her voice.
So I asked myself, as a filmmaker, if I want to have the same impact that I felt, the same emotion, I needed to go back to this moment. Not to do a documentary about something that happened in the past with all the proof and the investigation done around the case of Hind Rajab, the killing of this little girl. But something more about when it was possible to save her and to show the mechanism that failed her, but in the present tense. And how you do this in cinema, how you film in the present tense, you go back to this moment. If you don’t have archive, you bring actors, which is a risky choice. But I needed, with those actors, to do a movie in the present tense, but also to remind the audience that this was real. It’s a true story.
We’re not always with the real people, or the real Red Crescent workers’ voices. How did you decide when to bring those real voices in and when to remind us of the reality of the story?
Ben Hania: It’s like a contract with the audience. I’m telling them from the beginning that the story is real and the voices they are hearing on the phone are real, are from this recording. We talk about the recording from the beginning. And at some points, we have the actors portraying the real characters. But sometimes, acting is not enough. The actors themselves stop acting, and they enter in this middle place where they are hearing the people they are portraying, until this moment at the end … when they bombed the ambulance going to rescue Hind Rajab, meters away from her car. I needed, at this moment — which is a very horrific moment, beyond cruelty — I needed to go back to the archival element.
I had this incredible archive that the Red Crescent shared with me, which is the moment of the real dispatcher analyzing what they just heard. They heard the bombing of their colleague that they sent to rescue this girl. So in this moment, I needed to go back to the archival element to end the movie this way.
Through your press, you’ve talked about something I think about quite a lot, which is the role or responsibility of the artist when atrocities are happening. It’s something I struggle with a lot. I think art can be a powerful tool, but it’s not necessarily an immediate one. I wondered how your thoughts on that central question of your role in the world we live in with everything going on — atrocities in Gaza, atrocities in Ukraine, etc. — evolved over the process of making this film?
Ben Hania; I’ve been thinking about this since I’ve been witnessing the atrocity in Gaza, but even before, because all my movies are coming from realities that I found unjust. This question you’re asking me, it’s not a new question. All the artists who tried to portray, for example, the horror of World War II, ask themselves those questions. So it’s not a new thing.
There are two elements — the first element is the timing. Why did I make this movie right now? Because some people advised me to wait. Do it after 10 years, maybe it will be part of the history. I refused this, because I think that waiting, in the case of what is happening in Gaza — it’s not like there will be a trial, accountability and justice done. The Palestinians are living this injustice [for] years and years. It’s not new, and [justice] will not happen tomorrow. For me, doing this movie right now is also a way to participate in this fact of asking for accountability and for justice, amplifying Hind’s voice and what happened to her. For me, it’s the responsibility of me as an artist to amplify her voice. Through this movie, I hope — this is my ambition — that it can be a tool for change, for accountability, for justice.
This is about the [element of] timing, and then how to tell a story beyond imagination — how to tell it, from which point of view. For example, for me, when I heard the recording, it was all over the internet. The internet is [an] attention-grabbing thing, but it’s also the place for amnesia, for scrolling. So I needed to take this voice out of the rubble of the internet and to give it a place and the space to be listened to and be witnessed. Cinema can give you this place to take your time, to witness, to listen. But for me, it was out of question to do the mise en scène of the killing of Hind Rajab, to do the movie from her point of view, from Gaza. I think I found the right distance, which is people from Ramallah, which is in the West Bank. They are far from Gaza. They are the ones listening, and their position, in a way, is like a metaphor for our position around the world. We are far geographically, but we are hearing and seeing what is happening in Gaza, and we feel helpless. So that’s why, for me, their point of view was maybe the right distance to tell this story without being in something ethically questionable about the spectacle of death.
I’m glad you brought that up, because I was just thinking, you talk about the internet and how we’re constantly confronted with these things on our phones everyday — but we can put our phones down. Watching this movie, you’re watching people who are similarly confronted with it, but they don’t have that option.
Ben Hania: Right. It’s their life, you know?
Exactly. It’s a very powerful way of making a connection with the audience, but still kind of emphasizing that difference. You mentioned the importance of people seeing this movie, and I believe you have a U.S. distributor now. But obviously there’s been a pattern recently where it’s not been an easy path for a lot of films dealing with Palestine to distribution. What was that process like for you, trying to convince U.S. distributors of the importance of people seeing this movie here?
Ben Hania: It’s not about convincing the U.S. distributors about the importance, because this movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and it was the movie everybody was talking about in Venice … And since Venice, we’ve been winning audience awards in every festival. So it’s a movie for the audience. Any distributor who wants to distribute the movie to an audience will do it. It wasn’t the case for the United States, it was the case for other countries. For the United States, it was very complicated. All of the big distributors said no for the film, so we are distributing it ourselves, in a way, with Willa [Willa is a film production and distribution company founded by Elizabeth Woodward, who is an executive producer on the film].
So it’s a small release. It’s niche, you know. But, I was thinking about the American audience, and I wanted this movie really to go outside of its niche, to reach people who don’t care, who don’t know anything. This is my hope, even with this small release, that we can reach many people here.
I was reading about the shooting process, and how the actors didn’t necessarily hear the audio of Hind Rajab in full until they were shooting the film. I’m curious if you could talk about that decision, and also about trying to keep the set as safe as you could emotionally. I just watched the movie, and it’s difficult enough from that perspective, but it must have been 10 times worse in the room.
Ben Hania: With the actors, we were talking about the impossible position, where they are portraying real people [who are] alive. I put them in contact to speak together, every actor with the character he’s portraying, so they can speak and they can prepare for their part. But also, I came back to this idea of telling the movie in the present tense. I told them that the real dispatcher, they didn’t rehearse with her voice, you know? So if we want to do something beyond performance — because it’s not a movie about acting, performance, and me telling the actor, give me less emotion, more, you know — it’s not like a classical director/actor thing. So we agreed together that I needed them not to perform, but to be in that moment and to answer Hind’s voice. As we see it on the screen, they are not performing.
Then the other side of your question, there was a lot of support on the set. We were supporting each other a lot. But it’s also a question that we’ve been talking a lot about ourselves as crew members and as people doing a movie. We are privileged, you know? It’s not our life. So being so sensitive and saying, “Oh my God, they can’t stand this.” No — we felt like we were doing something very important, especially the Palestinian actors, because they want their story to be told. So for them, it was very important. It gave them meaning back to their work as an actor. It wasn’t easy to handle it emotionally, but at the same time, it was very rewarding. We felt that we were doing something very important that needed courage and determination.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” releases in Atlanta theaters this weekend.