ON SCREEN | THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB AT THE LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL

By Faizah Cyanide • On Reviews ,

The Voice of Hind Rajab, dir­ec­ted by Kaouth­er Ben Hania, is a dev­ast­at­ing and deeply human film based on real-life events that retraces the final hours of six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed in North­ern Gaza by the Israeli Offens­ive Forces (IOF).

The film opens in the frantic call centre of the Palestine Red Cres­cent Soci­ety (PRCS). Staff are exhausted, trau­mat­ised, and over­whelmed by the con­stant stream of Palestini­ans from Gaza plead­ing for help, many of whom they can­not identi­fy, loc­ate, or save. The film quietly exposes the scale of loss in Gaza, the thou­sands of unnamed vic­tims, each one someone’s child, par­ent or loved one.

Into this chaos comes the real emer­gency call from Hind. The film uses her actu­al audio from Janu­ary 2024. Hind’s fam­ily had tried to evac­u­ate Tel al-Hawa, an area Israel had ordered civil­ians to flee, but they became trapped in their car as IOF tanks opened fire. What fol­lows is the agon­ising attempt by PRCS dis­patch­ers to keep her alive on the phone while coördin­at­ing a res­cue team that was only phys­ic­ally eight minutes away.

The com­plex­ity of the res­cue becomes pain­fully clear. The area is des­ig­nated a mil­it­ary zone by Israel, mean­ing ambu­lances have no pro­tec­tion and must wait for the “green light” to enter. At sev­er­al points, Israeli forces jam the phone lines so com­mu­nic­a­tion is cut off, mak­ing any res­cue attempt even more dif­fi­cult. The PRCS even speaks with the Coördin­a­tion of Gov­ern­ment Activ­it­ies in the Ter­rit­or­ies (COGAT), a unit of the Israeli Min­istry of Defence, to help coördin­ate. It’s a cruel irony, as the res­cue team must appeal to the very insti­tu­tion respons­ible for the viol­ence and suf­fer­ing, but this is the real­ity of Palestini­ans whose every move­ment and aspect of life and death is con­trolled by Israel.

Every minute becomes a debate of risk versus duty, caus­ing mor­al con­flict with­in the team. While speak­ing to Hind, the team real­ises she is the only one in the car who sur­vived the attack and is sur­roun­ded by the corpses of her fam­ily. She is shot, bleed­ing, ter­ri­fied, repeatedly beg­ging for someone to come as night is fall­ing. Still, the res­cuers can­not move without Israeli permission.

The staff are torn apart by help­less­ness, yet they stay strong for Hind, telling her she has “the spir­it of a war­ri­or.” Hind’s moth­er also calls in, des­per­ate for news on her child.

Hours later, the green light finally arrives. The ambu­lance moves in. For a moment, there is a pre­ma­ture sense of relief; they are on the right street, so close to Hind.

Then we hear gun­shots, and the line drops, and this time they can­not be reconnected.
The ambu­lance crew, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Mad­houn, were killed. Until this moment, our focus is entirely on Hind, but sud­denly the scale widens, and the already depleted med­ic­al ser­vices have lost even more of their life­line. And bey­ond the sys­tem, two human beings are gone. Their cour­age, sac­ri­fice and the depth of their loss hit just as hard.

It would take Hind’s moth­er 15 days to learn her daughter’s fate, only after Israel lif­ted restric­tions on the zone. When the PRCS team returns, they find the charred remains of the ambu­lance and the bod­ies of every­one inside the car. Hind nev­er made it out.

The final scene returns to Hind’s moth­er, who recalls Hind say­ing she wanted the gen­o­cide to end so she could play by the sea. As her voice fades, the film ends with the sound of waves a gut-wrench­ing remind­er of all the child­hoods stolen in Gaza.

The film leaves you with a sick, hol­low ache. The res­cuers did everything they pos­sibly could, includ­ing risk­ing their own lives, yet the out­come was more death, more grief, more stolen futures. This is the real­ity of the gen­o­cide in Gaza.

Not­ably, the film con­tains no graph­ic viol­ence. It doesn’t need to. The audio alone is enough to shat­ter any emo­tion­al dis­tance. Hind is nev­er framed through the lens of iden­tity polit­ics she is just a child, a fel­low human being. In the Q&A, the act­ors emphas­ised that they are not try­ing to “human­ise Palestini­ans.” Palestini­ans have always been human. The issue is the world’s fail­ure to acknow­ledge it.

Some might ques­tion the use of Hind’s real call in a film in a Hol­ly­wood-type pro­duc­tion, but the dir­ect­or handles it with respect and neces­sity. This isn’t exploit­a­tion, it’s doc­u­ment­a­tion. It is a story the world must hear, espe­cially as Palestini­an nar­rat­ives con­tin­ue to be erased or dismissed.

The cast — all Palestini­an, spoke with raw hon­esty. They are liv­ing this gen­o­cide in real time, mak­ing a film about atro­cit­ies still unfold­ing. They talked about feel­ing con­flic­ted stand­ing on a stage dis­cuss­ing “their art” when the film is about gen­o­cide, yet sim­ul­tan­eously they felt it was a call of duty for them to tell their stor­ies as Palestini­ans. There is no sep­ar­a­tion between the art and the lives they lead. They wished Hind’s story had nev­er needed to be told, but it does, and The Voice of Hind Rajab is just one story out of thou­sands of Palestini­ans being killed even to this day. This film is not only a wit­ness but a remind­er that we can­not remain pass­ive. It calls on all of us to speak, to amplify

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Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clin­ic­al research by pro­fes­sion and has been an avid Hip Hop lov­er since the early 90’s, hav­ing cre­ated her own Hip Hop event, ‘Breakin’ Bound­ar­ies’ in the early 2000’s which was pre­dom­in­antly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al events pro­moters and dan­cers to inspire oth­ers through this artform.

About Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clinical research by profession and has been an avid Hip Hop lover since the early 90's, having created her own Hip Hop event, 'Breakin' Boundaries' in the early 2000's which was predominantly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with several international events promoters and dancers to inspire others through this artform.