One of the benefits of all of us having professional-grade recording devices on our persons
at all times is that we are able to document everything. One of the downsides to this is that
it’s possible to cross-reference any even slightly true story with the real footage of the case.
The case here is more awful than most, for The Voice of Hind Rajab is based on the actual
phone calls that five-year-old girl made to the Palestinian Red Crescent from Gaza on 29
January 2024. Parts of the actual calls are used, but this movie – which is not a documentary
– makes the wise decision to focus on the call handlers who did their best from their office
to save her life. But because of the genuine footage used, it is almost impossible to assess
this movie critically.
Director Kaouther Ben Hania, who also wrote the script, is one of the very few directors who
could have tackled this material. Her previous movie, Four Daughters, was about a family of
five women who lost two of the sisters to ISIS, and who used the chance of a movie about
their lives, including two actresses playing the missing sisters, to confront all their mistakes.
It was a deeply shocking and therapeutic movie, with a very clear eye designed to empower
those people who want their lives to be for living instead of a living death. Her first movie,
Beauty and the Dogs, used nine 11-minute single takes to follow one young Tunisian country
woman’s attempts to report a rape to the big city authorities, who are alternatively lazy,
corrupt, indifferent or judgemental about her plight. So this means Ms. Ben Hania knows
more than most about how difficult it is to find help when you’re in trouble, and how much
the human desire to help each other is stifled by a lack of resources.
So the ways in which the calls from the Rajab family car are handled pay sensitive care to
the nature of the work involved. The initial call comes through to Omar (Motaz Malhees),
who hears – as we in the audience all hear – one of Hind’s older cousins be shot dead. The
air goes completely out of the room. One of the older employees, Nisreen (Clara Khoury),
the main counsellor, gently walks Omar through the steps the dispatch provides for
colleagues who have been witness to a death. But when a man in Germany repeatedly calls
in insisting someone in that car is still alive, it’s Omar who insists on answering and being
the first to speak to Hind. The little girl seems happier to chat with a woman, so Omar waves
over a colleagues named Rana (Saja Kilani), who has had an awful day and was literally in
her coat heading out the door. But Rana stays on the line, trying to keep the little girl calm
as they try to locate her via the phone signal. As the seriousness of the situation becomes
clear, liaison officer Mahdi (Amer Hlehel) begins the tortuous bureaucratic process that will
enable an ambulance to be sent in without risking the lives of the paramedics. And from
time to time Ms. Ben Hania and her co-editors Maxime Mathis and Qutaiba Barhamji
wordlessly splice in the real footage filmed in the moment by other Red Crescent workers
on their phones to reminds us Omar, Nisreen, Rana and Mahdi are all real people, who
really lived this, and who really tried.
Mr. Malhees as the audience stand-in has the hardest part. His version of Omar simply
cannot understand why they can’t call the paramedics directly, why no one can simply show
up and save this little child in the middle of this war. He is the one who throws the temper
tantrums that ask why this is happening, why this is allowed to happen, and why no one in
the world seems able to stand up and stop it. This is just what people who already care about the plight of the Palestinians and the people in Gaza have been saying for a very long
time. And they also know that if someone doesn’t care, not even the begging of a small child
trapped in a car next to the mutilated corpses of her family will change that. The downside
of us watching everything in the the world through the screens on our mobile phones is not
that we become desensitized to suffering. Instead, thanks to the screens, we feel ourselves
removed from it. It’s something we can switch off or turn away from. It’s in our hands but
not our immediate atmosphere. We can ignore it if we want to. It’s not our country, not our
street, not our child.
But when it comes to works of art like this, people who turn away from human suffering
don’t matter. Movies like The Voice of Hind Rajab are for the people who do care. It’s an act
of gratitude for the people who are desperately trying to save little children like Hind, and
it’s an act of respect for everyone enduring suffering like Hind. Most of all The Voice of Hind
Rajab is an act of humanity. The world might be like this, but movies like The Voice of Hind
Rajab are trying to make it better. This is the only critical assessment possible for a movie
that features real deaths. You can either react as a human being, or you can turn away. The
choice is up to you.
The Voice of Hind Rajab recently played at the London International Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the LFF site for the title.
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