Sawt Hind Rajab (2025)
Genre: Drama
Duration: 89 minuten
Alternative title: The Voice of Hind Rajab
Country:
Tunisia / France / United States
Directed by: Kaouther Ben Hania
Stars: Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees and Clara Khoury
IMDb score:
8,3 (12.585)
Releasedate: 3 September 2025
Sawt Hind Rajab plot
Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A six-year-old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza and begs for help. While they keep her on the line, they do everything they can to send an ambulance to her.
Actors and actresses
Rana Hassan Faqih
Omar A. Alqam
Nisreen Jeries Qawas
Mahdi M. Aljamal
Reviews & comments
mrklm
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- 11629 messages
- 10041 votes
Six months after Amir Zaza's (superb) short film Close Your Eyes Hind, this reconstruction of the tragic death of five-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab and her family was released. Ben Hania uses authentic recordings of Hind's phone calls with aid workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent to recount the course of events from the perspective of those workers. Omar [Motaz Malhees] is the emotional (read: unprofessional) operator who screams bloody murder because the aid isn't arriving fast enough; Rana [Saja Kilani] is the team leader who finds it increasingly difficult to hide her maternal feelings; Mahdi [Amer Hlehel] is the pragmatist who explains why the aid is so slow to arrive; Rana [Saja Kilani] is a kind of mental coach who spends more time with her colleagues than with Hind. Dramatization with the original characters is too contrived to be convincing and shifts the focus from the real victims (Hind, her family and the ambulance crew) to people who stand powerless on the sidelines.
Translated from Dutch · View original
loer
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- 115 messages
- 2244 votes
This isn't a film you can or should judge as a regular feature film or documentary. The low ratings given here don't do justice to what this film is trying to be. The Voice of Hind Rajab isn't an exercise in cinematic perfection, but a pamphlet: an indictment of injustice, powerlessness, and the utter helplessness of ordinary people trapped in a fundamentally unjust situation.
This concerns a reality in which soldiers—read: a state—believe it's permissible, without any demonstrable evidence, to fire on a car full of ordinary civilians, including an innocent five-year-old girl, resulting in no one surviving. That's the context. Anyone who ignores that context and then becomes bothered by the form, tone, or "emotional involvement" is completely missing the point.
To then, as in one of the comments below, label Omar's emotions as "unprofessional" demonstrates a poignant disconnect from the harsh reality. When you're confronted day in, day out with death, despair, and human suffering, the concept of professionalism loses its abstract meaning. Emotion isn't a weakness here, but a logical and human response.
This film doesn't demand a detached assessment, but rather a moral confrontation. It transcends the local situation in Gaza. Above all, it is an indictment of any war that violates international humanitarian law...
Translated from Dutch · View original
MisterPink
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- 1382 messages
- 6967 votes
Hind Rajab as the Anne Frank of our time. Kaouther Ben Hania sets a high bar with this documentary. The comparison is provocative and rather absurd. The essential difference is that Anne Frank was aware of an invisible, watching reader and that she indeed intended her diaries for post-war publication. You can hardly say the same about the recorded pleas of the Palestinian girl. Despite her rebuttal to criticisms of emotional exploitation, the filmmaker bears full responsibility for dealing with Hind Rajab's mortal fears with integrity.
Well, maybe I'm just a novice when it comes to crisis situations, or maybe I've become so numb that I can't even begin to grasp the raw reality. The dramatic staging certainly does everything it can to distract from the real human drama. The biggest disruptor was the unprofessional Omar. Furthermore, the characters' behavior is so exaggerated, contrived, and manipulative. They scream, cry, faint, and destroy equipment. Instead of creating a realistic image, they seem more like caricatures meant to evoke specific emotions. The ending also felt so forced...
Hind Rajab’s voice is exploitation wrapped in melodramatic soap opera.
1 star.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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