Kaouther Ben Hania’s docu-drama The Voice of Hind Rajab premiered at the Venice Film Festival to thunderous acclaim, receiving a record 23-minute standing ovation and emerging as an early frontrunner for the Golden Lion.
The film tells the harrowing final hours of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who, along with six members of her family, was killed by Israeli occupation in Gaza City in January 2024.
Hind was shot 355 times. At the screening, the audience erupted in tears and chants of “Free Palestine” while waving Palestinian flags.
Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara were also present, standing in solidarity with Gaza.
Critics now tip the film as the frontrunner for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion.
The emotional core of the docu-drama comes from audio recordings of Hind’s desperate last call to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
Trapped in a car surrounded by the bodies of her aunt, uncle, and cousins, Hind can be heard pleading, “Please come to me, please come. I’m scared,” as gunfire echoes in the background. Rescuers were forced to wait three hours before the Israeli forces allowed an ambulance to approach. By the time they reached the vehicle, contact with Hind had been lost.
Days later, her body was found alongside her relatives and two ambulance workers who had tried to save her.
Speaking before the premiere, Franco-Tunisian director Ben Hania said the film was an attempt to resist the narrative that Gazan deaths are simply “collateral damage.”
She stressed, “And I think this is so dehumanising, and that’s why cinema, art and every kind of expression is very important to give those people a voice and face.”
Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, speaking from Gaza City, told AFP she hopes the film will open the world’s eyes: “The whole world has left us to die, to go hungry, to live in fear and to be forcibly displaced without doing anything.”
Investigations into the attack have cast further doubt on Israel’s official stance. A June 2024 Al Jazeera probe, working with Forensic Architecture and Earshot, found that an Israeli tank had opened fire from just 13 to 23 metres away.
A subsequent United Nations report confirmed that Hind’s car was struck at close range with weapons traceable only to Israeli forces.
While Israel has denied responsibility, stating its soldiers were not in range, the military has since said the case “remains under review.”
