The Voice of Hind Rajab (15)
Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania 
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

ON January 29 2024 volunteers at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society took an emergency call from a six-year-old girl called Hind Rajab who was trapped in a car, under fire in war-torn Gaza. 

“I’m scared… They’re shooting… Come get me please,” she pleads with operator Omar (Motaz Malhees). 

Both he and his colleague Rana (Saja Kilani) kept her talking on the phone while they did everything possible to get an ambulance to her. 

Writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania incorporates the real-life phone recordings featuring Hind Rajab’s actual voice with the re-enactment of exactly what happened at the call centre that day. 

You witness the frustrations and the trauma suffered by the operators as they fought with their boss to allow an ambulance that was on standby to go to the youngster’s rescue, as they heard shots being fired in the background. It was an eight-minute drive and yet it took three hours to obtain the green light from the official channels to let the ambulance go. 

The voice recordings are heart-wrenching and harrowing as Hind reveals that her whole family has been killed: her aunt, uncle and four cousins. It is impossible not be moved to tears like Omar and Rana as Hind begs to be rescued. 

This powerful drama is an intense race against time as Omar pleads and screams at his manager to let the ambulance go but there are protocols to follow to ensure the paramedics’ safety too. But even they too were killed by Israeli soldiers in the end.  

Hania is a master at walking a fine line between documentary and fiction as showcased in Four Daughters, and here she takes it to new and poignant heights. 

It is an extraordinary piece of cinema which demonstrates the unbelievable courage of a six-year-old girl, surrounded by her dead family, and who continued to stay on the line after she was shot. It also shows how this tragedy could have easily been avoided. 

Almost two years on no-one has yet been arrested or held accountable for Hind’s murder or that of her family and the two paramedics.  

Though this is a very difficult watch, it is a necessary one so that Hind Rajab, who was just six, isn’t forgotten. I cannot recommend this film enough.

In cinemas January 16.