“The Voice of Hind Rajab”: When the murder of a Gazan girl shakes the Venice Film Festival
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, September 6. Her film “The Voice of Hind Rajab” received a standing ovation during its screening. It focuses on the death of a five-year-old Gazan woman, killed along with several of her relatives by Israeli soldiers in January 2024.
[This article was first published on our site on September 4, 2025 and republished on September 8]
“A masterful work of direction that manages to blend reality and fiction, because the boundary between the two does not exist. There is no other Golden Lion possible,” argues La Repubblica after the screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab (“The Voice of Hind Rajab”).
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania has made a particularly harrowing film, based in part on actual recordings of the telephone conversation between the Palestinian Red Crescent and Hind Rajab, the 5-year-old Gazan girl who was killed by the Israeli army in January 2024 while trapped in a car among the corpses of six of her relatives.
The girl's voice resonated on Wednesday, September 3, during the 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival, before a particularly moved audience who acclaimed the film with a very long ovation and chants of "Free Palestine."
La Repubblica describes the end of the session as follows:
“Twenty-four minutes of applause. Joaquin Phoenix, one of the producers alongside Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, and Jonathan Glazer, was moved to tears. Photos of Hind dotted the seats in the main hall.”
Kaouther Ben Hania has previously tackled tragedies by blending fiction and documentary, as in Olfa's Daughters, screened in the official selection at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival . In her latest film, she retraces a massacre by depicting the emergency call center that the girl had contacted. Rescuers had been sent to the scene: two of them were also killed by the Israeli army.
Comment from the Italian daily:
“Throughout the film, it is us that Hind asks for help from, but never receives it. It is our helplessness, our despair.”
The film has also generated interest in the Arab media. “ The Voice of Hind Rajab promises to be one of the most notable films of the festival and awards season,” says Al-Araby Al-Jadid . The pan-Arab daily reports on the approach of Kaouther Ben Hania, who contacted Hind's mother, Wissam Hamadeh, to ask for her consent. Wissam Hamadeh spoke to her in detail about his daughter, from her love of the sea to her dream of becoming a dentist, in the hope that the film might raise awareness.
A foundation in the girl's name has since been established by a pro-Palestinian organization based in Belgium to prosecute Israeli officials and soldiers. It has notably filed a war crimes complaint with the International Criminal Court against Lieutenant Colonel Beni Aharon, the head of the Israeli battalion accused of killing the girl and her relatives.
“The shadow of the genocidal war in Gaza has hung over the festival since the very beginning of this edition, from calls to exclude actors because of their positions to a massive demonstration that drew thousands of people this weekend,” Al-Araby Al-Jadid recalls. Indeed, several thousand people demonstrated on September 6, on the sidelines of the festival, at the call of the collective called “Venice4Palestine” (V4P), founded by Italian film professionals to call on the film industry to denounce Israel’s actions.
No release date for The Voice of Hind Rajab in France has been announced yet.
La Presse , a French-language Tunisian daily, reports that the film by Kaouther Ben Hania, a leading figure in post-revolutionary Tunisian cinema, has already been chosen to represent Tunisia at the Oscars in 2026.
Courrier International
