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

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