The Voice of Hind Rajab delicately captures pure despair

On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent (also known as Red Cross) volunteers in Gaza received a call from a family trapped in a car under Israeli military fire. Moments later, only five-year-old Hind Rajab remained on the line, begging to be rescued. As paramedics had been killed in the area days earlier, the Red Crescent was forced to navigate a maze of military and governmental approvals before a rescue attempt could even be considered. Hind stayed on the call, scared and alone, as dispatchers tried to help.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is an expertly dramatized retelling of the tragic killing of Hind Rajab. It brings to light the painful logistics underlying the Red Crescent’s rescue missions that did not break through the media barrier

Set in the bleak Palestine Red Crescent Society call center, the film uses real audio of Hind Rajab from phone calls between the five-year old Palestinian girl and call centre staff.

Director Kaouther Ben Hania captures the tension,  helplessness, and anxiety felt by dispatchers responding to crisis calls and coordinating rescue. Ben Hania’s focus on the emotions of the volunteers at the call center and the circumstances that create much of the despair for the workers really drives home a message of how devastating it is to hold this position. 

The moral dilemma unfolds predominantly through the dichotomy of Omar, a young volunteer (played by Mataz Malhees) who first answers the call from Hind, and his supervisor Mahdi (played by Amer Hlehel).

When we meet Omar at the beginning of the film he appears lighthearted and calm, but the first call he takes, from Hind’s relative, immediately shakes him to his core, trapped in a car with her family, she she is heard begging for rescue before her voice is cutoff by heavy gunfire. Shortly thereafter, he receives another call from the same car, this time from Hind Rajab, who is hiding from Israeli forces in the wreckage of a car — surrounded by the dead bodies of her uncle, aunt and four cousins.

Still shaken from his first call, Omar looks up the route and sees that there is a dispatch that could be there in less than 10 minutes. He pleads with his supervisor to send the rescue team immediately, but Mahdi refuses to do so without approval from the Red Crescent so as to not risk the lives of his rescue workers.

This combat between moral urgency and life-or-death risk drives the film, with the increased tension rising both in the office, and on the phone with the real voice of Hind Rajab who is desperately pleading with the volunteers for her rescue. This goes on for hours, as Omar tries and fails to go over Mahdi’s head and get the route approval fast-tracked. The film shows a delicate understanding of this tension and the glaring horror behind it. 

Behind this story is an understanding of the futile feeling of attempting to coordinate with Israeli forces as they continue to indiscriminately attack Palestinians. Mahdi recognizes that even with route approval, the rescue team may not be  be safe from the Israeli forces. 

Near the end of the film,  the call centre staff record a video of them on the phone with Hind in hopes that her plight will help the Red Crescent secure route approval from the same Israeli military that is killing civilians en masse. Along with the real audio of Hind used in the scene, the film uses the real footage of Red Crescent staff which drew millions of people to witness Hind Rajab’s story in the first place. The camera sways back and forth between the actors recreating the scene in front of the phone whilst the real footage plays on the phone that’s supposed to be actively recording them. The sharpness of this technique is so immersive and so emotional, highlighting the deep desperation behind these volunteers trying to save a little girl. 

Much of the film is done with care and emotion to elicit the emotional realities of the Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers in the audience themselves. The audience feels the boiling frustration Omar feels, the intense sorrow felt by his colleagues, and the urgent but necessary cautiousness in his supervisor. The depth of the experience watching cannot be overstated.

The performances are profoundly emotionally, remaining carefully under melodramatic ranges to deliver an authentic retelling of a story that has already strung the hearts of millions of people. There’s a bleakness when watching a film such as this, knowing the ending is one of disaster. The tension does not release when the route approval is finally approved and underway. Instead, a breath is held, followed by a long silence dreading what came next.

Hind Rajab was killed by Israeli forces on January 29, 2024, along with two ambulance workers, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, who were dispatched to her rescue on a route approved by the Israeli military.