Kaouther Ben Hania's ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab' to premiere at Venice Film Festival

Broadcast Pro

5 days ago

Ben Hania obtained the full 70-minute recording from the Red Crescent, spoke with Hind's mother and rescuers, and crafted a script centered on silence, fear, and the agonising wait for help, rather than visible violence.
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania's latest feature, The Voice of Hind Rajab, will premiere in the main Competition at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 27 to September 9. The announcement was made by festival director Alberto Barbera, who described the film as a profoundly moving work likely to leave a lasting impression on both audiences and critics.
The Voice of Hind Rajab has been nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's top prize.
The film centres on the harrowing true story of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed along with six members of her family during an Israeli attack in Gaza in 2024. While fleeing Gaza City, their car was shelled, killing Hind's uncle, aunt and three cousins. Hind and another cousin initially survived and contacted the Palestine Red Crescent Society for help. Days later, their bodies were discovered along with the paramedics who had attempted a rescue. The tragedy drew global attention, with protests erupting around the world. At Columbia University, students renamed Hamilton Hall to 'Hind's Hall,' and American rapper Macklemore released a protest anthem bearing the same name.
According to the official synopsis, the film begins on January 29, 2024, when Red Crescent volunteers receive a desperate emergency call. On the other end is a six-year-old girl trapped in a car, pleading for rescue as gunfire rages outside. The Red Crescent team does everything in their power to reach her in time. Her name is Hind Rajab.
Ben Hania, best known for her acclaimed documentary Four Daughters, which premiered at Cannes in 2023 and earned an Oscar nomination, revealed that the decision to make The Voice of Hind Rajab was deeply personal and immediate. While traveling for Four Daughters' awards campaign, she came across an audio clip of Hind's final call for help. The impact, she said, was instant and transformative.
'I heard the sound of her voice, and I felt the ground shift beneath me,' Ben Hania recalled. 'In that moment, I knew I couldn't carry on with my original plans. I had to make this film.'
She added: 'I contacted the Red Crescent and asked them to let me hear the full audio. It was about 70 minutes long, and harrowing.
'After listening to it, I knew, without a doubt, that I had to drop everything else. I had to make this film.
I spoke at length with Hind's mother, with the real people who were on the other end of that call, those who tried to help her. I listened, I cried, I wrote.
'Then I wove a story around their testimonies, using the real audio recording of Hind's voice, and building a single-location film where the violence remains off-screen. That was a deliberate choice. Because violent images are everywhere on our screens, our timelines, our phones.'
She concluded: 'What I wanted was to focus on the invisible: the waiting, the fear, the unbearable sound of silence when help doesn't come. Sometimes, what you don't see is more devastating than what you do.
'At the heart of this film is something very simple, and very hard to live with. I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes. That pain, that failure, belongs to all of us. This story is not just about Gaza. It speaks to a universal grief. And I believe that fiction (especially when it draws from verified, painful, real events) is cinema's most powerful tool. More powerful than the noise of breaking news or the forgetfulness of scrolling. Cinema can preserve a memory. Cinema can resist amnesia.
May Hind Rajab's voice be heard.'