The impact of The Voice of Hind Rajab [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Kaouther Ben Hania
scheda film] after world-premiering in competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival was widely anticipated, and the movie certainly also lived up to expectations. The feature is a one-room-shot reconstruction of the January 2025 events surrounding five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a shelled car in Gaza, from where she called the Red Crescent help centre – the authentic tape from which is the centre of the film. Its reported 24-minute standing ovation is said to be the all-time record, and the gala screening was attended by the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, both executive producers on the movie. We sat down with director Kaouther Ben Hania for a far-too-brief conversation at the start of a certainly not uneventful journey for her new feature.

Cineuropa: As soon as The Voice of Hind Rajab had its very first screening, the reactions, emotions and not least opinions were very strong. As for yourself, people would certainly want to talk to you, whether in agreement or disagreement. Are you ready to become a spokesperson, of sorts, in this very political context?
Kaouther Ben Hania: Essentially, a filmmaker doesn’t want to speak; we like the film to speak in our stead. But since we are here, let’s speak. What has happened already at this point is beyond my expectations when I started work on this film. What happened yesterday at the premiere was so enormous: the attention surrounding the movie, and the fact that it’s at Venice and in the competition. When I started work on this film, my main obsession was to honour the voice of this little girl, and I wanted her to be heard. And I think that yesterday in the Sala Grande, that was the beginning of us hearing and listening to the pain and the agony of Gaza, through this little girl.

When did you decide to create this film, and when did you hear the voice on the sound file for the first time?
The Red Crescent had put a small excerpt online, and when I heard her voice, it was like she was asking me to help her: “Save me, save me.” To me, she is an Anne Frank of our time. Just as people know the name Anne Frank, they should know the name Hind Rajab.

Apart from her voice, we are increasingly upset, possibly horrified, at the complicated red tape surrounding the Red Crescent rescue operation. Did you feel something similar during your research on the film?
Sure, and of course I did. I chose to tell the story through the point of view of the help-centre people partly because of this. You realise when you understand the mechanism of coordination that the ambulance will be bombed if it’s not coordinated the right way. So, you have to talk to the army that’s killing your people about saving one out of all your people. A child is trapped eight minutes away from the ambulance, but you can’t send that ambulance into Gaza unless you want to be bombed. The Israelis are making the rules and the procedures – procedures that are making the lives of the Palestinians impossible. This is the horror beyond evil of this situation.

An instant “political film” is how many will regard The Voice of Hind Rajab. To what extent do you agree?
You know, this is about cinema. In cinema, you don’t have political slogans, but everything is political. You choose a story. You choose the characters. So, it’s about human empathy, and this is what makes cinema a strong medium. The situation we see in the film exists because of the political context, and you don’t have to spout slogans in order to tell the audience what to feel.

Speaking of cinema, did you get any inspiration from other films when creating this one?
Blow Out by De Palma, The Conversation by Coppola and The Guilty [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Gustav Möller
scheda film], a Danish film by Gustav Möller. They have all been inspirations.

An already reoccurring opinion on The Voice of Hind Rajab is that the film needs to come out right now, or preferably sooner. How do these plans look?
We still don’t have a US distributor, but many European territories are in the clear, and next week, that will be the case for my home country, Tunisia. It’s started.

Israel?
I, and the film, will boycott Israel until I can show it in Gaza.