Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania has made history by becoming the first Arab woman to receive three Academy Award nominations, following the nomination of her latest film, The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The film was among five titles nominated in the Best International Feature Film category, alongside The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, Sentimental Value and Sirat, as announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday.
Ben Hania's docudrama centres on the final recorded phone calls of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian child killed in Gaza by Israeli fire. It reconstructs the event from the perspective of the Palestine Red Crescent Society workers at the emergency dispatch centre trying in vain to save her, and utilises real voice recordings throughout.
The nomination marks Ben Hania’s third Academy Award recognition. She was previously nominated for the Syrian refugee drama The Man Who Sold His Skin in 2021, which competed in the international feature category, and again in 2024 for Four Daughters, her documentary that blended testimony and performance to explore intergenerational trauma.
With this latest nomination, Ben Hania becomes the first Arab woman to be nominated three times by the Academy. French-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb has been nominated three times previously for Best Foreign Language Film, as the category was named until 2019.
Speaking previously about The Voice of Hind Rajab, Ben Hania said the decision to focus on audio recordings was deliberate, allowing the film to convey loss without relying on graphic imagery. The project was developed rapidly in response to events on the ground, with the director pausing other work to complete the film.
The film won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival last September after garnering a record 24-minute standing ovation.
Ben Hania is the sole Arab nominee across the category this year. Three other Arab films had been shortlisted for the prize: Iraq’s The President’s Cake, directed by Hasan Hadi; Palestine’s Palestine 36, Annemarie Jacir’s historical epic set during the Arab uprising of the 1930s; and Jordan’s All That’s Left of You, Cherien Dabis’s intergenerational family drama spanning Palestinian history from 1948 to the late 1980s.
The Academy Awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on March 15.
