At Venice's International Film Festival, the world premieres in the competition in the competition will stop how long the mandatory standing ovation will take. Five, ten or even 15 minutes are not uncommon. In the morning, on the other hand, there is a different picture in the press demonstrations: The already tired journalists clap diligently if at all, but then also set out directly to write their texts or not to land too far in the coffee. Only with “The Voice of Hind Rajab” was it very different this time. Here there were even minute -long ovations from the press – and there were occasional but extremely emphatic boos. Of course, this only has to do with the purely cinematic quality.
Instead, the Gaza War hardly leaves someone cold anyway – and such a devastating testimony as the 70 -minute emergency records with the six -year -old Hind Rajab, who was in a car on January 29, 2024 after shot by the Israeli army alone, finally pulls the ground under your feet. Whether it is more likely to be classified as a humanistic gesture or cynical propaganda that Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania made the film in such a quick and also using the original emergency calls, is probably less related to the cinematic result than with his own attitude to the Gaza War.
Even the experienced team of the red crescent moon is particularly in shock on this call.
Since the bombing raids, emergency calls from Gaza have no longer been accepted on site, but will be forwarded to the operating center of the Red Half moon, which is about 83 kilometers away. The employees themselves are not directly in the war zone themselves, but they still need constant support from pastors because they can often not help callers or can only help them very delayed. The winding system is to blame: to get a route for an ambulance, it must first be specified by the Israeli army over several stations …
… and when it is finally available, everything starts again to get a green light for the operational trip. Otherwise, the helpers run the risk of being shot at or bombed. But although he has already experienced a lot, Omar (Motaz Malhees) receives a special call that day: a girl reports from a car in which she stuck together with six family members who have already shot. From outside you always hear shots and tanks. While the six -year -old Hind always asks to help her and pick her up, the mills of bureaucracy are apparently grinding particularly slowly this time. An ambulance would only be eight minutes away from the girl …
At the border between feature film and reality
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” plays (almost) exclusively in the operations center of the Red Half moon. While Omar and his colleague Rana (Saja Kilani) alternately speak to Hind to get information and calm her down, it is the task of her superior Mahdi (Amer Hlehel) to coordinate a safe escape route over several intermediate steps. The actors must strictly adhere to their real role models, because Hind Rajab's voice at the other end of the line is real (the real recordings went around the world shortly after the events in social networks). Also with her Oscar -nominated “Olfa's daughter”, Kaouther Ben Hania has already acted on the border between documentary and feature film, and the shapes also blur again in “The Voice of Hind Rajab”.
From the very first second, there is a high degree of urgency in the air, but it still happens little for a long time: Hind always asks for help in astonishingly calm voice – and if Rana cannot come out to get her out, her husband should just drive her, explains the six -year -old with a disarming child logic. Above all, it is a feeling of infinite powerlessness that is increasingly spreading in the room; At some point Omar is even so desperate that he is concerned with his own boss and plans to do any Harakiri actions on his own, just to do anything. The audience in the cinema hall is no different in such moments.
Rana (Saja Kilani) tries Hind Rajab on the phone on the phone that she threatens to lose more and more.
One day before “The Voice of Hind Rajab”, “A House of Dynamite” also celebrated its world premiere in the Venice competition. In it, director Kathryn Bigelow condenses the 20 minutes before the potential stroke of a nuclear rocket on US soil to a breathless thriller, in which mainly operations and telephone or zoom calls can also be seen. Kaouther Ben Hania, on the other hand, gets a lot of simple things to do (before she also moves into the picture in the last few minutes with a brilliant idea also the real role models of the protagonists):
There are also the hand camera common in this genre, which always wobbles a little and approaches the faces very close to transporting emotions and authenticity equally. But Kaouther Ben Hania is still a long way from the staging brilliant of a Kathryn Bigelow. Fortunately, you almost want to say – because then the title -giving calls of help from Hind Rajab would probably not have been endured at all.
Conclusion: A single blow into the stomach pit that leads the whole helplessness of mankind in painful 89 minutes.
We saw “The Voice of Hind Rajab” at the Venice Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere as part of the official competition.