The Voice of Hind Rajab review: A vital, powerful must-watch
There are powerful, urgent films, and then there’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, the shattering, heartbreaking film that stunned everyone to silence as the credits rolled during its film festival circuit last year. I cannot stress highly enough how important this film is – please see it if you can.
Kaouther Ben Hania‘s docudrama follows four employees working at the emergency call centre for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on 29 January 2024. They receive a call from Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl who is trapped all alone in a car with her dead relatives in Gaza after it was targeted by an Israeli tank and riddled with bullets. The girl repeatedly pleads with Omar (Motaz Malhees) and Rana (Saja Kilani) to rescue her, but given the conflict, they can’t simply send an ambulance into an active warzone.
The Voice of Hind Rajab, as the title may suggest, uses the real audio recordings between Rajab and the PRCS on that tragic day. It dramatically recreates their phone call, with actors playing the parts of the PRCS workers and responding to the real voice. Later in the film, they show footage of the real aid workers next to the recreated footage to prove just how meticulously they’ve reconstructed some scenes. Although the use of Rajab’s real voice was upsetting, this side-by-side footage is where I finally started to cry.
However, some imagined scenes take place away from the call. Omar frequently hops away from his desk to plead with Mahdi (Amer Hlehel), the main coordinator, to send an ambulance. But it’s not a straightforward request. Even though there is an ambulance ready to go, minutes away from Rajab’s location, they have to go through a lengthy chain of command, involving many phone calls and intermediaries, to get the Israeli army’s permission to approach the area. Mahdi needs to have assurance that the ambulance will have a safe passage before sending his paramedics out.
The phone call scenes are emotionally brutal, whereas this part of the film is infuriating, maddening and it all feels so unfair. Omar becomes increasingly angry and frustrated and takes his helplessness out on Mahdi, yelling at him to break protocol and send the ambulance anyway. The wait is agonising, there is a lot of shouting and it becomes quite repetitive, plus it feels like it’s dangling the carrot in front of us, giving us hope, even though you know how the story ends.
Those are my only criticisms, but it honestly feels wrong to point out any negatives when a film is this important, powerful and of its time. This might just be one story, but it represents so many others just like it, and its specificity makes it all the more harrowing, shocking and upsetting.
Make sure you’re in the right headspace for this though, because if you’re anything like me, you will come away feeling emotionally battered and may not be able to shake it for a while afterwards.
In cinemas from Friday 16th January