At a time when the genocide in Gaza has fallen off the front page of the news, Director Kaouther Ben Hania’s film The Voice of Hind Rajab compels us to confront the ongoing violence against the Palestinian people.
The film tells the true story of a five-year-old Palestinian girl named Hind who is trapped alone in a car after shelling by Israeli troops kills the rest of her family. Using the real recorded audio from this child’s desperate phone call to the Red Crescent emergency services, the film thrusts us into the urgency of this unthinkable situation. Tucked away in a car that was later found with 335 bullet holes, Hind waits for hours while the Red Crescent volunteers desperately attempt to coordinate an authorized route for an ambulance to reach her.
Hind’s repeated pleas of “don’t leave me” and “come get me” speak directly to us in the audience, leaving us both helpless in our seats but also moved to take action in any way we can. As director Ben Hania reminds us, “The Voice of Hind Rajab is not only about one child. It is about the system that made killing her possible… The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab, killed her family, killed the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions.”
This film is a powerful reminder of the cruel realities of our current system, in which U.S.-supplied weapons are used to murder a kindergartner crying for help on the other side of the world. We have a responsibility to share Hind’s story and continue to fight for a world in which such atrocities would be unimaginable.
