Director Kaouther Ben Hania brought The Voice of Hind Rajab to the September 2025 Venice Film Festival where it received a record-breaking 23 minute standing ovation and won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.The film was created alongside Brad Pitt, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonathan Glazer on board as executive producers, with actors including Palestinian-Jordanian actress, Saja Kilani. It is currently shortlisted for the 98th Academy Awards.

This film bears witness to life under siege, honoring Hind Rajab, and the courage and memory of all Palestinian martyrs. 

In 2024, the voice of a six-year-old Palestinian captured hearts around the world, a voice that is no longer with us, yet continues to be a catalyst for liberation. While fleeing Tel al-Hawa, Hind Rajab was killed in the car next to her relative's martyred bodies. In a just world, she would have survived. Instead, Hind has become a symbol of Palestinian childhood, resilience and martyrdom. 

Through The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisian Filmmaker, Kaouther Ben Hania, captures Hind’s story, while confronting the layered realities of the Palestinian identity and grief. The docudrama is constructed from the recordings of Hind’s phone calls and the testimonies of the Ramallah Red Crescent volunteers, who remained on the other end of the line, bearing witness to her final moments. 

Now, the rest of the world has a glimpse into what was lived and felt.

The film follows two of the Red Crescent dispatchers, Rana and Omar, as they navigate Hind’s pleas for rescue and the delayed responses from Israeli authorities, hindering their rescue efforts.The pleas lasted over three hours.

Rana and Omar's interactions, emotional overwhelm, and reactions to the situation showcase the varied ways Palestinian frustration shifts between individuals and moments. Anger surfaces alongside grief, and manifests differently in each person, while others simultaneously turn to isolation or publicizing the unfolding tragedy in an attempt to galvanize public support. 

Before writing the screenplay, Ben Hania spoke with the volunteers, listening to their recounts of the fear, helplessness and confusion they felt. These conversations inspired her approach to the casting and honoring of the volunteer’s experiences. 

“I started thinking about whether the actors should look like them.” she reflected. 

Actors were placed in direct contact with their respective volunteers, bringing truth and emotional proximity to their performance.

While the film is set in Rana and Omar’s world, Hind’s voice moves the story, painting a detailed portrait of the day. Ben Hania is aware of cinema’s ability to generate empathy, but she refuses to manipulate the story to do so. Rather than dramatizing the day’s events and  emotions, Hind’s recorded reality carries the full weight of the narrative. 

“We kept {the recordings} with all the scratches and interference of the phone.” Ben Hania emphasizes. 

Hind’s face is visible only through printed images. The car itself is never shown. However, her voice shapes the scenes, whether they’re unfolding inside the Red Crescent or within the unseen confines of the car. “The fact that we have these recordings was enough,” Ben Hania explains. “We should only hear it, not see it, you can see it by hearing it, you can imagine the situation.”

Cinema’s power is the protagonist’s ability to capture the hearts of the viewers. In this case, Ben Hania tells a story of a real protagonist, trusting the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Accountability, she suggests, is not a message to be stated, but a responsibility to be confronted. Ultimately, her goal is to awaken the public’s collective responsibility. “The conversation should be about accountability and justice,” she emphasizes. 

Many urged her to wait several years before releasing the film, concerned about its close-timing to Hind’s martyrdom. Ben Hania remained committed to continuing the conversation and seeking justice for Hind and all those who met a similar fate. She wants the audience to bear witness to the crimes as they unfold today. 

“For me, it was very important to make the movie right now… We need change… There is no accountability, there is no justice,”. she emphasized. 

Films that confront real, ongoing violence do more than show tragedy, they push you to feel the moment. “I believe cinema offers something different,” Ben Hania explains. “It doesn’t report, it remembers. It doesn’t argue, it makes you feel.”. The Voice of Hind Rajab does not aestheticize or romanticize loss, it acts as a testimonial and a memorial.

Ben Hania also acknowledges a more painful perspective to creating this film, a mere wish she had never created it, because if Hind were still alive today, it would not exist.

The film is inherently political. It’s a story of a political experience lived by a politicized child. Ben Hania explains that a political statement is not necessary. The recordings and the narrative are political in their very existence. “Because she’s Palestinian, because she’s from Gaza, she was killed,” Ben Hania said. “The political weight is on her body, her martyred body,”.

This film operates simultaneously as cinema, testimony and a memorial, without one function overpowering the other. However, memorial cinema often overlooks one crucial truth: its subjects never consented to becoming symbols. Hind Rajab did not seek representation or legacy, she simply sought survival. 

“She didn't want to become a symbol, but because of what happened to her, she became one,” Ben Hania explains.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is now streaming in select theaters. Find more information here.