The Voice of Hind Rajab

The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by a visionary Kaouther Ben Hania, commences with a telephone ringing. A random number calls Red Cross volunteers for help. It’s urgent: as we learn from the woman’s voice, a car with the entire Palestinian family in it is now under fire by Israeli troops. When Omar (a superb Mataz Malhees) asks his caller for more details, we hear shots fired, and then there is a hush. What remains is his tense breathing. It’s Omar’s first experience of a caller’s sudden death. As we already know, it won’t be his last, either. A few minutes later, though, Omar manages to call a small girl from the same car. She’s trapped, but still alive. At least for now.

The entire situation is reminiscent of a bus accident described by Nathan Thrall in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. After all, both tragedies happened in real life. But Rajab’s inevitable demise is not a misfortune, not an unexpected domino effect, not a coincidence, but a repercussion of the current Israeli invasion. In the film, the on-screen team does everything to help Hind, yet it’s not that simple: so many procedures await them and getting the green light to send an ambulance seems like a Kafkaquese chore. Omar will shout, Sana (a wondrous Saja Kilani) will faint, while Mahdi (tense as a cat on a hot, tin roof, Amer Hlehel), a supervisor responsible for his rescuers, will play a shooting game on his smartphone to ease the stress.

Their inaudible sound of helplessness consequently evolves to a collective bellow of sorrow. All of it is caused by the vulnerable, terrified, stray, rambling and powerless voice of Hind Rajab, which we also hear on screen – instead of hiring a child actor, Ben Hania was determined enough to use the original recordings and implement them in her drama. It’s almost impossible to tell if the actors’ reactions are their own emotional responses or if we can still call it a performance. Just like them, we will also hear Rajab’s final words. And then there’s only grim silence left.

For some cynics in Venice, Ben Hania’s recent feature seemed like a way to monetise someone’s pain and, ultimately, the deaths of several people. Such a claim couldn’t have been further from the truth – what the director does instead is allow every viewer, no matter their personal beliefs and opinions, to participate in this unfair struggle to save an innocent human being. What will last after watching The Voice is Hind Rajab’s smile, seen in a few photos of possibly the most guiltless victim out of them all. And, a memory about her will live for many years to come. When we look at her cheerful countenance, a head full of dreams, a human being for whom infinite possibilities await, we understand that we failed as a species.

Ben Hania keeps reminding us that people will only react when confronted with an individual tragedy. Reading that every day, numerous people presumably die in Gaza makes us used to the number, makes the evil seem totally banal, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt. But watching a moment when the vital energy slowly leaves Hind’s body is something else. All of it jogs our memory about the reality of war – God knows how many Hind Rajabs are still there and await an ambulance to come. The feature’s most astonishing triumph is that it changes the audience’s optics. Now we want to save them all, even if we’re somewhere else, only watching Ben Hania’s tour de force in a Venice cinema. 

Jan Tracz

The Voice of Hind Rajab does not have a release date yet.

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Watch the trailer for The Voice of Hind Rajab here: