SCREENING + CONVERSATION
WITH DIRECTOR KAOUTHER BEN HANIA
January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under 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. Her name was Hind Rajab.
Audio clips from Hind Rajab’s harrowing call were released to the world, even before her fate was known. They resonated globally as both tragedy and indictment.
When Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania heard Hind’s voice, she began to see a way to preserve and honor Hind’s voice through the language of cinema. Ben Hania, nominated for the Academy Award for both The Man Who Sold His Skin and Four Daughters – one nomination for fiction and then for a documentary – has long navigated the porous boundary between documentary and fiction to craft films of beauty and power. With her hybrid film The Voice of Hind Rajab, she has created her most uncompromising and intimate film to date, linking the pure and devastating truth of Hind’s voice to a narrative work of cinema that unfolds through the eyes of those who tried to save her: the Red Crescent team on the other end of the call.
In Arabic and English with English subtitles
Director Kaouther Ben Hania (Tunisia 2025) 89 min.
MVFF48 OFFICIAL SELECTION
$15 General | $13 Seniors + Youth | $10 CAFILM members