Posted in
Film & TV, Hind Rajad
Opinion: Hind Rajab’s story should be a call to action, not applause
Text Jannat Suleman
Over the past week, Hind Rajab’s name has rung rightfully and repeatedly down the corridors of our algorithms. We have watched flags raised and chants started in the comfortable grandeur of the Sala Grande at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with director Kaouther ben Hania’s now-Silver Lion-winning film The Voice of Hind Rajab igniting the anti-genocidal activism and pro-Palestinian sentiment.
Hand in hand with this passionate reignition that seems to ebb and flow with the release of each recent Palestinian feature (To a Land Unknown, From Ground Zero, Cannes’ premiere of Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk, and now Palestine 36) comes the criticism of the Hollywoodian moral apathy that accompanies each release. Some feel the cinematic awareness is performative and insignificant – that making a film is tone-deaf. Between the groundbreaking nature of these films and the dissonance of them documenting what we already see in plain sight on social networks, it stands to question: what should we make of The Voice of Hind Rajab?
Actor Motaz Malheez, who plays Omar Alqam, lead dispatcher at the Red Crescent who takes Hind’s call, seems to believe the film presents the cusp of change. “This story is revolutionary, brought in peace – not with bullets and rockets. It’s not just a movie.” When asked about his role in said revolution, Malheez confidently reiterates his castmates’ sentiments: “We’re here [in Venice] as activists, not just actors. We have a huge responsibility as actors when choosing which stories to represent and how we tell them.” Malheez’s view of retelling Hind’s story seems to reside predominantly in the symbolism of Palestine, perhaps inadvertently manipulating Hind’s story into the so-called ‘starting point’ for a cinematic revolution. In fact, The Voice of Hind Rajab is just a movie. A movie about a girl who was murdered not even two years ago, during a genocide that shows no signs of slowing.
Additionally, the film has been the centre of swirling online scepticism thanks to the late-stage executive producer credits for big A-listers Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuaron, and more. It’s crucial to note Ben Hania’s comments on the newly added producers: “The Americans, they’re giving their name to help us with distribution, awareness, all these things, it’s not financial. It’s the American way; they’re just showing support.” Clara Khoury, who plays Nisreen Qawas, the Red Crescent counselor on-call during the devastatingly long waiting game to save Hind, adds that the A-listers “are helping to push this story, this movement, and they’re really helping us to amplify our voices but Hind’s voice, too.” For some, this automatically reduces the capacity of Ben Hania’s film to elicit change, reducing any intentions to preserve her memory authentically to the weak interventions of late-stage American sympathy. If anything, the director and cast’s gratitude for support feels self-indulgent and encouraging of the American savior complex. These names do not eradicate previous silence; these celebrities do not deserve to be lauded for blind last-minute support. If anything, these names draw attention to the moral tickboxing we see taking place in Hollywood and beyond:
Despite the controversy around its supporters, the film is lined by the one pure and undeniable testimony that is Hind’s voice, which also determines the tone of the cast’s statement to the press in Venice, read by Sara Kilani, who plays Rana Faqih, the supervisor who speaks to Hind on the phone for most of her painstakingly patient wait. Kilani says, “We felt like it was our responsibility, it’s a big duty to tell this story and to tell it right.” Ben Hania’s approach to Hind’s story was also borne out of an inherent feeling of responsibility: “When I heard this voice for the first time, I knew it was my responsibility to make this film. I felt helpless, and the only thing I could do was restore some dignity to this girl and make sure she is not forgotten. What can I do? I’m a filmmaker, I can make a movie.” Of course, Ben Hania is not the only filmmaker who has felt this way.
In 2011, Palestinian documentarian Emad Burnat and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi brought the documentary 5 Broken Cameras to the awards conversation, bringing in nominations for their storytelling of the encroaching Israeli settlements. In 2015, Mai Masri brought a tale of Palestinian captivity in an Israeli jail to the screen with 3000 Nights. In 2021, Darin J. Sallam’s debut feature Farha narrated the oppressive origination of the Nakba to great acclaim. And now, since 2023, we have had Bye Bye Tiberias, No Other Land and Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk: three documentaries that each capture real and tangible facets of Palestinian erasure, combating it by memorialising their stories. And still, after each film, the occupation continued, the genocide ensued, the Zionist regime was uninterrupted. Despite Ben Hania’s intentions, I fear The Voice of Hind Rajab will fail to permeate past the undeniable theatricality of its retelling against the backdrop of Gaza’s near-complete destruction.
Nevertheless, Khoury and co-star Amer Hlehel who plays Mahdi Aljamal, head of coordination at the Red Crescent, particularly believe in the lasting power of Hind’s story. “It’s a film that will live so long, because it’s not just about politics. It’s about this little girl making us question our existence in this world and our intentions and what we are doing for humanity. Yes, this is very important for the Palestinians today, but you don’t need to agree with the Palestinian point of view in politics to watch this, you just need to connect to Hind’s voice,” Hlehel says. It’s intriguing at the least and concerning at most that Hlehel’s most optimistic interpretation of the film seems to cater exclusively to the uneducated, supposedly apolitical Americanised view of the genocide. Hind’s death was inherently political. At its core, it could have been prevented by the responsible intervention of governments, the execution of justice in response to Israel’s war crimes and at the very least, the universal protection of children like Hind. Still, Khoury commends Ben Hania’s responsiveness: “Thank God that Kaouther took this initiative immediately. She struck while the iron was hot.”
Perhaps disappointingly, some have seen Ben Hania’s quick reactions to making the film as akin to opportunism; using Hind’s story for cinematic success – but Ben Hania is categorically uninterested in the success of awards. “It’s not my priority to win festivals with this film. For me, success is the film being distributed worldwide.” At the time of writing, the film has not secured North American distribution and remains on the festival circuit in London this October. Crucially, Ben Hania mentions she would not have made the film without Hind’s mother’s blessing, who requested the amplification of her daughter’s voice. “I want her voice to echo all over the world, as it reminds us how we continually fail Gaza and its children.”
Ben Hania uses unedited recordings of Hind’s distress calls, laced with the devastating sounds of the 355 bullets hitting the car she was trapped in, surrounded by corpses of her aunt, uncle and cousins – the Hamada family. With the Red Crescent’s documentation of almost all their operations, Ben Hania uses real videos of the workers speaking to Hind in the film alongside the actors’ portrayals. On these visual parallels, Ben Hania reiterates the mass desensitisation to the genocide: “People don’t believe what’s happening in Gaza, people debate it. For some, it’s beyond imagination, so we anchor the movie in reality. The truth behind her voice is crucial and must be emphasised.”
Speaking to the cast and Ben Hania, to then return to the online discourse, I can’t help but feel that in the micro-dissection of the film’s intention, its impact begins to be lost. Hyper-criticism dilutes the power of Ben Hania’s film as a vehicle for Hind’s final message to the world: “I’m so scared, please come.” Yes, the dissonance of nearly a thousand peaceful protesters being arrested at a pro-Palestine Action protest in London shortly after a record-breaking 24 minute standing ovation is palpably shocking. But whilst pressure is continually applied to complicit governments, Malheez reminds us that still there are those that remain blind to the genocide, seemingly jolted and awakened only by the cinematic power of storytelling. “We’re waking people up with this story, they’re realising their complicity in their governments and through these stories they’re thinking okay, wow – I’m a big part of this.”
Hearing the cast’s feelings around the supposed reinvigoration of the pro-Palestinian movement sounds oddly narrow-minded, especially when it’s considered to originate from a film premiered at such a juxtaposingly glitzy and glamorous festival. There are plenty of people awakened, and plenty of influential parties aware, but inaction, surface-level sensitivities, and performative activism remain. Will The Voice of Hind Rajab change this? Realistically, we must conclude it will not – it will only add to the swathes of shared Instagram stories of purported sadness and sympathy from self-proclaimed ‘woke’ Western celebrities.
When asked if the sea of censored Instagram videos or the countless appeals for help on TikTok achieve the same empathy as the film, Ben Hania is prepared with an answer: “Social media is scrollable, sitting in a cinema isn’t. The scrolling sanitises and desensitizes us to Hind’s situation, to the genocide. That’s about amnesia, this is about memory.” It’s undeniable that, despite any cinematic significance Ben Hania’s direction provides, social media plays a crucial and uniquely archival role in documenting the nuances of war crimes that our now-defunct news networks omit – and this should not be dismissed for the sake of cinema. In this spirit, during the last ten minutes of the film, Hind’s mother shares her testimony, and Ben Hania ends the film with blurred yet still harrowing footage of the corpses of the two paramedics, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, who were so close to reaching Hind yet were killed by the IOF in the last two minutes of their journey. I had previously seen this clip on Instagram – but did not know the stories of the paramedics, which Ben Hania had now compiled, evoking an even deeper heartbreak and resonance.
Rather than debate the potential success of the film, which feels open-ended and often entrenched in the privilege of being detached from the realities of a genocide embroiled in a now-Level 5 famine, I feel an anecdote from the Venice press room where I interviewed the cast and director is more telling of the film’s necessity and thus, crucial distribution.
As Ben Hania answers question after question, a German journalist asks her if she would show the film in Israel. With shocking self-restraint, she answers that she would not only love to show the film in Gaza but would want to show it to Hind’s mother. “There’s nowhere left to show the film,” she reminds the journalist, adding that an Israeli screening would “normalise the occupation – and I stand against this.”
Regrettably, the journalist’s ignorance and thus, the necessity of The Voice of Hind Rajab rings true in his next question: “Are there movie theatres in Gaza?” Following an awkward silence and laughter of disbelief, Ben Hania simply asks: “Have you seen the maps? Do you think Gaza needs to see a movie? They don’t, they need our help.”
Not only does this chasm-like void in the journalist’s awareness aptly demonstrate how much awareness there is left to disseminate amongst the sadly ever-prioritised Western world, but I feel it also reminds us that while we rightfully interrogate the intentions of those telling stories against those working on the ground in Gaza, Palestinians remain overlooked and desperately unaided amidst the politics, perpetual violence and purposeful erasure. If Ben Hania and her cast can be credited with achieving anything, it is a reminder that change is still on the horizon and must be encouraged – it must be strived for, not least through the power of stories to combat the disrespectful censorship of the Palestinian people.