How to critique a film that transcends fiction and is so ingrained in the reality of today? Raw, real, heart-wrenching, The Voice of Hind Rajab recounts the final hours of a young girl trapped in a car under attack in Gaza, and the reactions of the volunteers at the Red Crescent who were on the phone with her throughout. Most significantly, the voice we hear is the real recording of the incident, which took place in January 2024. I have never seen so many people sobbing in a cinema.
Motaz Malhees plays Omar, the humanitarian worker who picks up a call from a young girl trapped in a car following a shooting. When the line goes dead, Omar is devastated – the kindly therapist onsite, Nisreen (Clara Khoufy), gives him a blank profile to hang up in his cubicle until the victim is identified. In the common area, dozens of pictures of the deceased hang on a large corkboard dedicated to their memory. Omar is subsequently contacted by the girl’s uncle, who tells him that her cousin, a six year old, is still stuck in the car. When Omar calls the given phone number, it is Hind Rajab who answers. Follow a series of heart-wrenching backs and forths, as Omar and his supervisor Rana (Saja Kilani) attempt to understand where she is located and keep her calm, while colleague Mahdi (Amer Hlehel) kickstarts rescue mission protocol: Hind Rajab is only eight minutes away, but the route must be safeguarded before a team can be sent out. The tension never lets up – the line intermittently cuts out, and there is shooting in the background at various stages. Never does Hind Rajab stop begging for them to come and rescue her – efforts to distract her while they await news from the Red Cross amongst others quickly fall to the wayside, and frustrations begin to rise in the office as bureaucracy clashes with humanity.
Rare are actors who treat such traumatising material so conscientiously – each performance is more carefully crafted than the next, especially Malhees, whose devastating helplessness is palpable, raw. Even more striking is the fact that each person-turned-character embodies a different facet of a variety of reactions to powerlessness. While Omar is angry and begins to breach rules and protocol, Rana lets her emotions take over at the risk of scaring the child on the other end of the line, at which point it is Nisreen, overarching maternal figure for her colleagues, who must intervene. Mahdi meanwhile shows a composure interpreted as indifference, as he must choose between the little girl and putting his last emergency team – after having lost so many – at risk. At times, director Kaouther Ben Hania gives her actors a moment of respite and allows for their real life counterparts to speak – it is here that The Voice of Hind Rajab reverts into documentary as they watch the oscillogram quiver, taking a beat when of course the real volunteers could not. A step further allows us to see the latter through the screen of a phone (a fifth colleague at one stage begins chronicling the events), the actors blurred out in the background. Just as the audience runs the risk of falling into the trap of illusion, Ben Hania brings back the discomfort, the knowledge that this really happened. This is, however, two-pronged – a sense of unease pervades the nature of this film at times. Is dramatizing these very real events, and namely using a victim’s voice in a film produced by the likes of Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, somewhat of an appropriation, a disservice? What of the disconnect between those watching and those who have lived through it? Perhaps this is the type of discomfort that we need for change – the voice of Hind Rajab, both real and film, is now more than a memory. It is a piece of history.
