Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under IDF fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her.

‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ is the Tunisian entry for this year’s Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, and it is a docudrama about a young girl (Hind Rajab) who was killed during the war in Gaza in early 2024. The film reconstructs the final hours of her life, placing the audience inside a confined, escalating situation as Hind Rajab remains trapped in a car, speaking to emergency services over the phone as gunshots and explosions can be heard in the background.

Taken on its merits as a film it is undoubtedly effective, claustrophobic and all the more chilling for the voice at the end of the phone line being a little girl who we know will be dead by the film’s conclusion. The direction is extremely tight, carefully controlling perspective and pacing to build an almost unbearable sense of dread, while a cast of mostly unknown actors give committed, convincing performances. Their work grounds the film, helping the tension build steadily as the situation becomes more hopeless and bureaucratic processes create barriers to saving Hind Rajab.

Where the film becomes more complicated is in the choices it makes about perspective. The director makes a clear and deliberate decision to show events almost entirely through the viewpoint of the Red Crescent volunteers, a choice that amplifies the film’s emotional impact, but does so by narrowing how these events are framed and understood. The use of Hind Rajab’s real voice recordings, even with her mother’s consent, is undeniably powerful, but it also raises ethical questions about using real recordings of a dying child in this way.

That tension ultimately defines ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ as a viewing experience. As a piece of filmmaking it is gripping, harrowing and extremely effective, and it achieves exactly what it sets out to do. At the same time, I was left unsure how I felt about some of the decisions behind it, unsettled not just by the events it depicts, but by how deliberately the film shapes our response. It’s a film that will stay with you, both for the real life horror of what it shows, but also for the way the filmmakers have chosen to tell this story. In a way, all good cinema should provoke thought and strong emotional responses, and ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ certainly does that.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Kaouther Ben Hania

Starring: Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel and Clara Khoury

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt36943034/