Film about Palestinian girl’s desperate plea was a ‘way to not feel helpless’, says director

“They’re shooting at me. Please come get me. I’m scared.”

When filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania first heard the emergency phone call recording of Hind Rajab, a frightened six-year-old Palestinian girl begging for help while under siege in Gaza City in 2024, on social media, she says she immediately knew what she had to do.

Hitting pause on the movie she was about to make, the Tunisian two-time Oscar-nominee called her producer and they agreed to shift focus to telling the story of the girl, who was killed – likely by Israeli fire, according to a number of media investigations – along with her aunt, uncle and cousins, and two paramedics sent to save her.

“It haunted me,” Ben Hania tells BBC News about the voice recording, which is the centrepiece of her Oscar-shortlisted docudrama, released in UK cinemas last Friday.

“I was really angry, I was sad, I felt helpless, and I hate it when I feel helpless.

“I asked myself this basic question, what can I do? I’m a filmmaker, so I can do movies.”

She adds: “We started working on The Voice of Hind Rajab that way to not feel helpless, to not accept, to bear witness.

“Because not doing it, for me, was being complicit in a way.”

Hind Rajab’s car was hit by suspected Israeli fire as she and her family tried to flee bombing during the two-year war in Gaza.

Several family members were killed, but Hind managed to answer a callback from the helpers at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The ambulance trying to reach her was also shelled, and Hind, her family, and the ambulance crew all died.

The Israel Defence Force initially stated none of its troops had been in the area where Hind and the others were killed.

But that suggestion was questioned following independent investigations by research agency Forensic Architecture, in colloboration with NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) Earshot and journalists from Al Jazeera, which concluded that damage to both the car and the ambulance was consistent with Israeli tank fire.

The IDF later said it had “conducted raids on terror targets” with forces operating in neighbourhoods in Gaza City, including Tel al Hawa, from where Hind had made her emergency call.

The UN cited her case in a commission of inquiry accusing Israel of war crimes, which it denies.

An IDF spokesperson told the BBC it is still being reviewed by Israel’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism (FFAM).

Ben Hania’s film sets out to tell the story – in Arabic and English – of what happened to Hind and her family, from the perspective of the Red Crescent volunteers at the Ramallah call centre in the occupied West Bank.

It is “based on true events” and “anchored in truth”, Ben Hania says.

“At some point, with all this proof, I thought that we are done explaining”, she adds.

“Cinema can do something better, which is provoking empathy.”

The feature mixes audio of the girl’s heart-rending real final phonecalls with the Red Crescent, with a visual dramatisation using actors to represent the volunteers.

They try to keep her calm and conscious as it becomes clear she is surrounded by the dead bodies of her relatives.

Critics have praised the emotional impact of the performances, while noting the problems inherent with mixing documentary with drama.

Variety’s Guy Lodge said it was “impossible not to be moved” by the recording at the heart of the hybrid film, heard at an “agonising distance”.

But he felt “the ethics and execution of the concept are questionable”.

In a four-star review, The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin said the feature “transcends shock value” and presents viewers with “an ethical dilemma”.

“I dreaded watching this film,” he wrote. “Yet having now seen it, I find my mind changed, thanks largely to the philosophical diligence of Ben Hania’s approach.”

The director – who received the blessing of Hind’s mother, Wesam, before making the movie – says she did her best to “respect the testimony” of the volunteers and what they told her about that day.

She did not reach out to the other side, because, she says: “My movie is not an investigation.

“The investigation was already done,” she adds, with reference to aforementioned findings, as well as those made by other major news providers including the Washington Post and Sky News.

Increasingly stressed scenes play out in the film between call centre worker Omar, played by Motaz Malhees, and his boss Mahdi, played by Amer Hlehel.

Mahdi is seeking a safe route approved by the Israeli army – via intermediaries – for his paramedics to make the eight-minute journey to carry out the rescue attempt.

Omar becomes exasperated at his boss’s insistence on trying to negotiate with Israel.

Actresses Saja Kilani and Clara Khoury, as fellow call centre workers Rana and Nisreen, respectively, complete the ensemble cast of actors of Palestinian origin.

We watch them hear the sound of gunfire or an explosion in the background before the phone connection is lost entirely.

“Even the actors, at some point, stop acting,” says their director. “They weren’t performing.”

Malhees confirms this. He tells us he suffered panic attacks during filming and thought his heart was “going to explode” during one scene, which for him was “like a real conversation with a child”.

“It was a hard experience, but it’s worth everything to give.”

His director stresses she wanted to share with the audience what she had felt the first time she had heard the girl’s call for help. “I thought that she was almost talking to me, to save her”.

She told herself: “I need to go back to this moment when it was possible to save her.” Before “the war, mainly, failed her”.

In another four-star review, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said there is “a reckless, ruthless kind of provocative brilliance in what Ben Hania is doing”.

He wrote: “Is it in bad taste? Problematic? Well, in a world where directors busy themselves and us with made-up stories about made-up people, Ben Hania is at least grabbing one of the most relevant issues of our time with both hands and finding a way to thrust it under our noses.”

The main question for Ben Hania when making the film was always: “How to make the voice of this little girl echo?”, she explains.

“Because the world don’t want to hear it. It’s not a comfortable thing to face.

“And for me, it was important to honour her voice and to make it resonate beyond borders.”

Worried that it would be perceived as “niche”, the filmmakers reached out to some famous Hollywood faces – including Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara – who signed up as executive producers.

Phoenix and Mara were in attendance when the film received a record 23-minute standing ovation following its September world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it also won the grand jury prize.

“I was like, when will they will stop?” recalls Ben Hania of the “incredible reaction”.

“And actually they stopped because the theatre asked us to leave, because there was another movie!”

“There was a moment of solidarity for real,” adds Mahlees. “You could feel that the people are there with you. You are not alone in this world.”