It is instinctive to be sceptical of a movie produced with the direct involvement of the party depicted in it, even if that party happens to be an organization with as upstanding a record as the Red Crescent Society. Obviously, they have a vested interest in their workers and volunteers being depicted in certain ways that maintain their organization’s credibility. And we’ve seen movies that are just puff-pieces for their companies. But director Kaouther Ben Hania, a filmmaker with as much experience in documentary as with narrative films, finds a way around that conflict of interest by proving at every point she can the factual validity of what she is depicting. And with a story like this that is especially important.
The death of Hind Rajab is one of the most enduring and potent tragedies of the Israeli genocide in Gaza -a six-year-old girl whose family car was mercilessly and repeatedly attacked by the IDF, resulting in the deaths of several of her family members, before the ambulance coming to rescue her was also shelled and she was left to die alone. Hind is rightly a martyr to the Palestinian cause, and making a movie about the incident even at this stage feels taboo. Is it mere exposure or exploitation to reenact that -something that Ben Hania grapples with as she blends her recreation with the real thing numerous times, speaking passionately to the integrity of the voice of Hind Rajab.
Her film of that name is set entirely within the offices of the Red Crescent, where early in the day on January 29th, 2024 they receive an emergency call from a girl trapped in a car under fire, vociferously pleading to be rescued and describing as best she can the circumstances around her. The volunteers listening in and trying to comfort her are played by actors -Motaz Malhees as Omar, a passionate but undisciplined newcomer to the organization, Amer Hlehel as Mahdi, the stressed and strictly orthodox director, and Saja Kilani as Rana, the empathetic counsellor emotionally worn down through speaking to the frightened and devastated child. But Hind herself is speaking in her own voice, the recordings preserved and incorporated into the film by Ben Hania -which is stated bluntly upfront to ensure the audience is aware of the gravity of what they are listening to. Nothing is necessarily being revealed, most of this dialogue between Hind and the workers has already been made public. But against this visceral reenactment it hits a lot harder than in the vacuum of the incident’s aftermath. It is a horrible, sobering thing to hear a child describe her cousin next to her as “sleeping”, to hear her beg to be rescued. And the actors take on the gravity probably more easily than they might otherwise.
The Red Crescent isn’t lionized by the film, its volunteers depicted as trying their best with a difficult situation and their personalities rubbing up against one another in the heat of emotion. Omar just wants to go out there to where the car is and bring Hind back, but Mahdi makes very clear the intense danger of that without proper clearance. Any unauthorized rescuer could be fired at by the IDF still in the area. Through Mahdi and his frustrations at trying to get a green light via several layers of communication, the film emphasizes the bureaucracy trapping humanitarians and preventing them from doing their work with regards to Gaza specifically. The buck still stops with the Israeli army -they determine who goes in to tend to casualties and when, and from all that we witness they’re certainly not in any hurry to let the Red Crescent find Hind. And of course even when they do grant permission for an ambulance to go collect the then injured little girl, giving both her and the volunteers a significant spark of hope, the green light proves to ultimately not mean much.
It is an impossible situation and the tensions that rise in the office are fully understandable, even if Omar occasionally takes them too far -stealing Mahdi’s phone and cursing their liaisons or just insulting Mahdi’s own allegiances. The facts are laid out though very well, the cruelty of a system where the very people enacting the harrowing violence against this girl are also those who hold the power over the Red Crescent saving her. Between Mahdi and Omar, Rana is just the unrestrained heart -Kilani giving the best performance of utter emotional crisis while trying to maintain a sense of calm for the sake of Hind. Ben Hania keeps the camera close on her during the communications, only cutting away to the screen with its real timestamp. And hearing that voice, relaying the tender details of life and family, you can believe Kilani’s real avatar was just as distraught.
Some of the moments of talk with Hind use the real dialogue of the actual people she was speaking to, not their actors -which you can detect if you pay close attention to the voices. It is a mostly inconspicuous choice, though one that struggles to justify itself beyond perhaps flowing better with the voice of Hind herself. What is much more distracting is a sequence at the end where the camera takes on the perspective of someone holding up a smartphone and recording the staff waiting to hear word of Hind’s situation late into the night -the figures on the recording are the real people, as their actors reenact exactly their postures in the frame around it. It is as though Ben Hania feels the audience is unconvinced of the reality of the story, needing to impress just how authentic this account is by compositing it against actual footage. But it’s effect is actually just akin to when a biopic incorporates footage of real public appearances that contrast against the actor’s appearance as that figure. It makes the movie momentarily less about Hind and more about the novelty of it’s imitation -a stark departure from what is otherwise an overwhelming priority taken with her and how her plight effects these people.
The bit of transposed reality that works the best is the use of pictures of Hind that are quickly hung up around the space and that Ben Hania cuts to occasionally during the conversations with her -putting a face to the voice we are listening to. That is subtly about the most important thing a movie like this can do -brazenly humanize this victim of atrocity. It highlights too that Hind Rajab is not unique -her tragedy is shared by so many other children. That she got through to the Red Crescent in her final hours however makes her an avatar for the voiceless; and one of the most damning testimonies of genocide. The Voice of Hind Rajab is a worthy testament to her and for its mixed results the docudrama format succeeds at its most critical function. In a time when so much of the issues of the real world are filtered in movies, either necessarily or not, the power in actually confronting these horrors directly cannot be overstated. This is a movie that forces its audience to contend with the genocide in Gaza in a stripped-back and unquestionably evidential fashion. In a sense it is a trauma we are all obliged to share.
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