The Silence was Deafening: The Voice of Hind Rajab Movie Review

A scene from the movie with the main character (from right to left): Clara Khoury as Nisreen, Saja Kilani as Rana and Motaz Malhees as Omar.

During my whole experience watching movies in theaters around the world, this was a first for me to witness the whole audience sit through the end titles of the movie and about half the scrolling credits, then leave the theater with absolute shock and a deafening silence. Throughout the whole 90 minutes as well, literally every single person in the audience was silent, except the sounds of light weeping and sniffling. That much everyone was unable to fathom the picture moving on the screen telling a horrible real-life story that’s uglier than imagination.

[embed]The official trailer of “The Voice of Hid Rajab” movie by Kaouther Ben Hania

Hind Rajab: A Palestinian “Anne Frank” Story

“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”

• Anne Frank

Between 1942 and 1944, the then 13 year old Anne Frank started to write her own diaries about her life under the oppression of Jews in Europe and through the horrifying Nazi Holocaust. Her diaries has been translated into over 70 languages and sold more than 30 million copies, and remains a powerful symbol of the Holocaust and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

In 2024, 80 years after the murder of Anne, the then 6 year old Hind Rajab, at about of half of Anne Frank’s age, was not yet at the point to write a diary like her in written Yet, the diary of her last day on earth under the brutal bombardment and massacres of the Israeli army, was recorded in audio format for the world to hear. One day, or more accurately three hours, of her life was enough to summarize the life of every child in Gaza, and broadly every child under a brutal war and oppressive regime.

“Don’t leave me alone, Mama. I am hungry, I am thirsty and I am wounded.”

• Hind Rajab

Hind wrote her last memoir over a phone call. Her innocent words, her extremely scared voice, her tears, her confusion while answering questions told a million stories about the children of Palestine. If you want to know how Anne Frank felt in her last days. You probably should listen to Hind’s voice recordings, better yet watch this movie.

The Plot

The movie is made in a docudrama genre. The story is basically based on the true events of the murder of the Palestinian 6 year old Hind Rajab and 6 other family members (her uncle, his wife, and four of their daughters including Layan who was the first one to pick up the Palestinian Red Crescent ‘PRCS’ call before she was shortly murdered while speaking to them) in her uncle’s car while trying to evacuate the Tel Al Hawa area in the northern part Gaza Strip in response to the evacuation order, from the Israeli army themselves, following the route that was falsely declared “safe” by them as well.

The car was surrounded by Israeli military tanks around 1:00 PM on January 29th, 2024, merely four month into the carnage in Gaza that started after the 7th of October 2023. Hind’s other uncle called the PRCS from Germany, where he lives, because he was worried as he never heard from his brother after they left. He provided the PRCS with the location of the vehicle and the number that they can call to check on what happened.

The PRCS calls the number immediately after the uncle provided it and 15 year old Layan, Hind’s cousin, picks up. She answers them frantically and tells them that they are surrounded by Israeli tanks, and urges them to come for help. Merely 18 minutes after Layan picks up, we hear heavy and rapid gunfire from the tank, mixed with Layan’s voice screaming in agony as she obviously was shot by multiple bullets, then the call is disconnected. Layan didn’t even had a chance to tell er name or what happened to her family. The PRCS thinks this was it, until the uncle in Germany texts them that there is a 6 year old young girl in the vehicle that’s still alive. That was Hind Rajab. The scared innocent little girl, who at the time, was the only survivor of this act of massacre hiding among the dead and bloody bodies of her six relatives. From that point the story of the three-hour struggle to rescue Hind from the evil jaws of the Israeli army starts.

[embed]The voice of Layan (Hind’s cousin) who was the first to pick up the PRCS call, only to be killed merely 18 seconds later by the Israeli tank’s gunfire.

Hind’s mother keeps calling the PRCS frantically to get updates, at the end, they put her on the phone with Hind to talk to her and keep her strong and hopeful. Hind’s voice starts to weaken as she informs the PRCS and her mom that she’s injured and probably bleeding. No one knows how badly injured she is, but this adds more pressure and mental stress to the whole team at this point.

The team tries their hardest to secure an ambulance to come get Hind while she’s still alive and locate her parents to let them know the situation and decide their location. With all the complication that the Israeli army and government create to make sure that most people die without hope of rescue, some diplomatic effort succeeded in pressuring the Israeli army to approve a secure route for the ambulance to rescue Hind. Only eight minutes drive from where the ambulance was located to the location of Hind’s. The “green light” was given and the ambulance that includes a paramedic “Ahmed Al-Madhoun” and the driver “Yusuf Al-Zeino”. Merely 50 meters to the south of the vehicle that Hind is hiding in, the tank fires a M830A1 missile, towards the ambulance. M830A1 is a 120 mm high explosive anti-tank multi-purpose (HEAT-MP-T) round that its copper-lined shaped charge reaches temperatures between 827°C to 927°C (1,100 K and 1,200 K). The direct impact of this horrible weapon shot from about 50 meters directly into a vehicle results in instantaneous and unsurvivable trauma — with the body likely dismembered or vaporized at the point of impact. According to forensic reports and witness accounts, only charred bones and partial skeletal remains were recovered from the burnt-out wreckage. Two brave young mean that were willing to do everything to rescue a 6 year old innocent girl, were reduced to almost nothing in a couple of seconds.

Yousef Zeino, left, and Ahmed al Madhoun were deployed in a bid to save Hind, but the Red Crescent lost contact with them as there ambulance was bombed merely 50 meters (165 feet) away from Hind.

After the PRCS team heard the explosion live from the rescue team while they were on the phone with them to finalize the rescue of Hind, everything went silent, all hopes were dead. Hind is now to face her last fate, alone, injured, bleeding, hungry, thirsty and above all scared of the dark above all.

“Don’t leave me alone, Mama. I am hungry, I am thirsty, and I am wounded.”

• Hind Rajab

That was it. Hind’s voice was gone forever! Murdered in cold blood by 355 tank bullets shot at her uncle’s car where she was.

Hind Rajab’s Last Moments

Although this was not mentioned in the movie, but Hind’s voice was fading away and her words were much less. The QRCS team still trying to talk to her to keep her awake hoping that a miracle will happen and she will be rescued alive. This is when she tells them that she doesn’t want to to talk because every time she does, blood comes out of her mouth on her clothes and she doesn’t want her mama to have to clean it (given the fact that water is cut from Gaza). Even in her very last moment, she was worried that her mama would have to clean her bloody clothes which means to find a water source, which was scarce (and still until the writing of this article), then find a place to wash then dry then iron. Things that we take here in the West as extremely basic and trivial, let alone have to burden our children to think about.

That was Hind Rajab. The cute, innocent little girl in preschool (kindergarten) the “Butterfly” class. Hind, who was afraid of the dark more than she was afraid of the tank. Hind, who stopped talking because she did not want to burden her mother with washing her clothes from the blood gushing out of her mouth every time she tries to talk. Hind, who told the story of every child in Gaza without her consent and despite her wish, but she did. Hind, who became the Palestinian version of Anne Frank, teaching us the once oppressed, could become one day worse, and more brutal than their oppressor.

“I’m not speaking because every time I talk, blood comes out of my mouth and makes my clothes dirty. I don’t want my mom to have to clean it.”

• Hind Rajab (last words)

Photos of Hind Rajab 5~6 years old prior to her tragic murder.

The Making of “The Voice of Hind Rajab”

The whole movie takes place inside the office of the PRCS in Ramallah, which was taking care of Gaza related emergency calls after their head office their was completely destroyed by the Israeli army. Only 4 main characters play the actual roles of the PRCS staff who spoke to Hind on that day. All the phone recording of Hind are the original phone calls with her own innocent and scared voice.

The limitation of both location and active characters put a heavy load on the performance as the whole focus is on them. During the 90 minutes of the film, each character has to perform longer parts that are emotionally charged even on the personal level of the actors themselves, given the fact that they are all actually Palestinians and they are living the tragedy themselves and probably lost a family member, a relative, a friend or someone thay care about in the West Bank or Gaza since the massacre started after October 7th, 2023. The writer / director Kaouther Ben Hania and some cast members mentioned n several interviews that they had to get some long breaks during the shooting because they were too stressed to continue and mentally devastated. This probably did a service to the film that you can see how raw the feelings of the actors were actually on the camera yet, at the same time it was (at some moments) too overwhelming for the audience to take.

I personally liked the fact the cast were extremely resemblance to the actual PRCS staff, whether in their clothing, attire, hair style and even their voices. Kaouther Ben Hania chose to include some parts of the recording with the original voices of the PRCS staff and you can notice the resemblance in the voice and tone. The fact that she was able to find actors that are almost identical to the original team, adds another layer to the screening integrity that Ben Hania is a master of as a long time documentary filmmaker.

There was no much music or fancy sound effects at all because of the limitation of the location and casting. Yet there was some dramatic background tunes, especially in the most stressful scenes in the movie.

I was was impressed by the camera movement though and the utilization of the glass reflection of Hinds photos as well. Some scenes of focus and defocus to the degree of making eveything look like color particle was very impressing as well. She also added some scenes of the sky and the seashore to represent Gaza, which was nowhere filmed in the movie yet the audience can picture its beauty and destruction through the whole movie. I personally believe that Ben Hania used these techniques and additional symbolic scenes to break the stillness of location and cast avoiding the audience bore that might be caused of these factors. In my own humble opinion, she definitely mastered it.

Ben Hania from Documentaries to Docudrama

I can’t think of someone better than Ben Hania, who has a long history of excellent documentaries, to transition to a docudrama about a very real story that happened during a massacre that the whole world watched, and still, live on their phone screens and social media platform.

She took an immense risk of mixing original audio recordings of Hind throughout the movie and from the actual voices of the PRCS staff members with their own voices and mix them with the actors voices. She stated in many interviews that it would be a “bad state choice” to fake a voice of child actor because the idea was to “honor her [Hind’s] voice”. She believes that using a child actor’s voice after the whole world heard Hind’s voice will not serve the movie well, and her her goal of using Hind’s original was not to fictionalize or dramatize it, but to amplify a real, living voice that had been ignored by the world.

“When you hear her voice, you can’t unhear it.”

• Kaouther Ben Hania (about Hind Rajab)

I also believe that Ben Hania’s long experience in documentaries has served this movie not to blur the fiction from reality. From the very first title, all the information from the real events were shown on the screen with real dates, locations and names. Every recording we heard from Hind was titled exactly as the actual .wav sound file that was retrieved from the PRCS from that day. She made sure that, even when we were watching the scenes that were done by actors, we were never disconnected from the reality of the horrible events that took place at that day.

Transitioning from documentary work to docudrama was very sleek in my opinion too. She professionally balanced the professional acting skills of the actors at the same time that she kept the value of documenting the real-life events through acting and the original voice recordings of the PRCS staffers. The camera movements were also balanced between telling the actual story and the acting drama.

This probably was the reason why everyone in the audience were literally mesmerized in silence during and after the movie (which inspired this article’s title). People, during the show, never had side conversations, whispers or came with any movement except some quiet weeping and sniffling. It was a true deafening silence, similar to the silence that Hind’s death and after her death from the global powers who could have prevented her death, and other children’s death, from ever happening. People sat through about 7 minutes through the end titles (except for two persons to be honest), something that usually never happens but they were in complete shock and awe obviously. I think that probably some hope that there might be a post-credit scene to fix this horrible reality but unfortunately there wasn’t any!

Ben Hania has mastered the ultimate audience shock that they were so silent as if they were in a funeral, and many of them were crying in vain once they left the movie theater. I believe this will not be the reaction if she did this film as an actual documentary. The filming took about 3 weeks in a location in Tunisia, where Ben Hania is originally from.

The Last Scene: The Horrifying Reality — In Reality

One of the most, if not THE most, effective scenes was the last scene of the movie was a never been published footage of the actual PRCS staff sitting around a table after the bombing of the ambulance, most probably recorded by Rania (the real staffer) of the QRCS staff members trying to figure out what happened to the ambulance while still talking to Hind. The actual recording in the film is shown as if Rania (the actress) is recording the staff members (the actors) during this desperate and stressful conversation. The camera and sound shifts focus and sound between the actual footage of the staff members and the actors in the movie.

At this point, I noticed that the audience was at the utmost shock. Not just that they are hearing the original voices of the staffers, but now they can actually see them. The actors were imitation the dialogue of the original staffers and also their body movements and gestures almost to the single muscle movement. This scene has unblurred all the barriers between fiction and reality to every audience member in the theater to the point that there was no way to get these images out of their minds. It was actual, it was true and it was just as horrible, cruel and criminal as it could. Kudos to Ben Hania on this amazing work. A work of art that impressed me to the point that I’m so unwilling to criticize some minor things I noticed here and there because they don’t matter at all and of no value when you look at the bigger picture.

A Tragic, Yet True, Ending

After the last scene, we see real footage of Hind’s uncle car that was still standing there for the following 12 days of the Israeli army siege of that area with the decomposing bodies of Hind and her family, in addition to the horrific footage of the ambulance that was brutally bombed by an Israeli tank while the PRCS workers are trying to retrieve what’s little left of the remains of Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, the two paramedics who were trying to rescue Hind and they could barely recover a skull, a spine and a couple of bones of each body.

Hind’s uncle car found 12 days after the massacring of Hind and her family members with 355 bullets through its body and significant damage caused by the Israeli tanks around it.

The remains of the PRCS ambulance that was bombed by the Israeli tank merely 50 meters south of Hind Rajab’s uncle car with very little left of the two paramedic remains who were inside it.

The last thing we see is Hind Rajab’s mom and her only baby brother speaking about Hind and the pain pf losing her but the hope of a global awakening that will lead to political actions to prevent from another Hind tragedy to happen again.

Global Reception

The Voice of Hind Rajab has received universal acclaim and global momentum since its release, emerging as one of the most impactful films of 2025. The film, a docudrama written and directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, is based on the real-life events of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who died in January 2024 after being trapped in a car under Israeli military fire in Gaza. The film uses actual recordings of her desperate pleas for help, blending them with a dramatized reenactment of the Red Crescent emergency responders’ efforts to save her.

Critical and Festival Reception

• Venice International Film Festival (September 2025): The film premiered in the main competition and won the Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion). It received a record-breaking 23-minute, 50-second standing ovation, the longest in festival history, surpassing even Pan’s Labyrinth’s 22-minute ovation.
• San Sebastián International Film Festival: Won the City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award, the highest score ever achieved at the festival (9.52/10).
• Rotten Tomatoes: 96% positive critics’ score; Metacritic gives it an 84/100, indicating “universal acclaim”.
• The Guardian called it “fierce, urgent, and heart-shattering,” while The New York Times and Vogue included it among their 10 Best Films of 2025.

Global Screenings and Advocacy

• The film has been screened at high-profile institutions including the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the UK Parliament, the EU Parliament, and U.S. universities, often followed by panel discussions with director Kaouther Ben Hania and real-life responders.
• It was selected as Tunisia’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Non-English Language Film.
• Willa, the distribution company, secured U.S. theatrical release, with a December 17, 2025 launch in New York and Los Angeles, followed by a national rollout.

Audience and Cultural Impact

• Critics describe the film as “a humanist marvel” and “the most vital film of the decade,” praising its restraint, emotional force, and moral urgency.
• The film’s use of real audio and its focus on systemic failure rather than graphic violence has been widely lauded as a powerful cinematic and ethical choice.
• It continues to spark international dialogue on war, humanitarian response, and the role of cinema in bearing witness to tragedy.

To summarize, The Voice of Hind Rajab has achieved unprecedented global recognition, combining critical excellence with profound social and political resonance.

Oscars’ 2026 Potential

The Voice of Hind Rajab is a shortlisted contender for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards (2026), representing Tunisia. The film, directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, is based on the true story of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, whose final phone calls to the Palestine Red Crescent during an Israeli attack in Gaza on January 29, 2024, went viral. Ben Hania blends actual audio recordings with dramatized reenactments of the emergency workers’ desperate attempts to rescue her.

The film has received universal critical acclaim, won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, and earned a record 22-minute standing ovation. It is also a Golden Globe nominee for Best Non-English Language Film (2026). Despite its prestige, distribution in the U.S. remains challenging due to the film’s politically charged subject matter, with release handled by Willa, a relatively new distributor.

While the film is a strong early favorite in the Oscar race, its path is complicated by the sensitivity of its content and the current climate around the Israel-Palestine conflict. Still, its emotional power, technical precision, and urgent storytelling have made it one of the most talked-about and impactful films of the year.

Cast and Crew

Kaouther Ben Hania: Writer / Director

Saja Kilani: as Rana Hassan Faqih

Motaz Malhees: as Omar A. Alqam

Clara Khoury: as Nisreen Jeries Qawas

Amer Hlehel: as Mahdi M. Aljamal

Artistic / Technical Details

Genre: Docudrama

Languages: Arabic, English

Runtime: 1h 29m (89 min)

Color: Color

Aspect ratio: 2.39 : 1

Special Thanks

Finally I would like to thank these organizations for their efforts to bring this movie to TIFF Lightbox:

1. Canadian Muslim Health Network (CMHN)
2. DAG (Doctors Against Genocide)
3. Amnesty International Toronto - GTA Palestine Action Team

Appreciate their efforts and support for this and for their general work in helping multiple communities through their programs and teams.