'I had to make this film': Kaouther Ben Hania brings Hind Rajab’s story to Venice Film Festival

The Voice of Hind Rajab, nominated for the Golden Lion, will dramatise the Palestinian girl's final moments in Gaza

Hind Rajab's story will come to life from Oscar-nominated director Kaouther Ben Hania. AFP

Twice Oscar-nominated Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s next film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, will debut in competition at the Venice Film Festival, scheduled to run from August 27 until September 9.

The film dramatises the final hours of five-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab, who was killed by Israeli fire in January 2024 after being stranded in a car with her dead relatives in Gaza.

Her recorded cries for help, made during a 70-minute call with emergency responders, were widely circulated online and became a haunting symbol of the war’s toll on civilians.

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The Voice of Hind Rajab has been nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize. It will compete against several high-profile films, including Frankenstein by Guillermo Del Toro, No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook, and A House of Dynamite by Kathryn Bigelow.

Ben Hania, whose last film Four Daughters was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Academy Awards, says she was compelled to change course entirely after hearing Hind’s voice for the first time.

Tunisan director Kaouther Ben Hania winner of the Cesar fo best documentary film in 2024. EPA

“There was something electric in the energy around this project – so immediate, so alive,” she said in a statement. “In all my years as a filmmaker, I never imagined it would be possible to go from start to finish in just 12 months.”

She explained that the idea came to her during a layover in Los Angeles, while she was in the middle of her Oscar campaign for Four Daughters.

“Then, everything shifted. I heard an audio recording of Hind Rajab begging for help. By then, her voice had already spread across the internet.

“I immediately felt a mix of helplessness, and an overwhelming sadness. A physical reaction, like the ground shifted under me. I couldn’t carry on as planned.”

Ben Hania obtained the full audio through the Red Crescent. “It was about 70 minutes long, and harrowing,” she said. “After listening to it, I knew, without a doubt, that I had to drop everything else. I had to make this film.”

The film uses the real audio recording as a central narrative thread. Shot in a single location, the movie avoids visual depictions of violence, opting instead to focus on tension, silence, and the growing fear of a child left without rescue.

“What I wanted was to focus on the invisible: the waiting, the fear, the unbearable sound of silence when help doesn’t come,” said Ben Hania. “Sometimes, what you don’t see is more devastating than what you do.”

“At the heart of this film is something very simple, and very hard to live with. I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes. That pain, that failure, belongs to all of us.”

Artist Emmalene Blake puts the finishing touches to a mural of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza. PA Wire

Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamadah, said she was contacted by Ben Hania about the project a year ago.

“Despite the pain and the weight of grief, I felt that Hind’s voice needed to be heard loud and clear,” she said. “One year later, we are moved that this film will be shown at the Venice Film Festival. As a mother, nothing will ever heal the wound of losing my daughter. But knowing that her voice will now echo across the world gives me strength.”

“Thank you Kaouther and all the team for making this movie.”

Ben Hania added that while The Voice of Hind Rajab is a deeply personal story of loss, it also carries a wider resonance.

“This story is not just about Gaza. It speaks to a universal grief,” she said. “Cinema can preserve a memory. Cinema can resist amnesia. May Hind Rajab’s voice be heard.”