FILM REVIEW: "The Voice of Hind Rajab" is harrowing, confronting, and urgent cinema

 When the film ended, the cinema was silent for a full two minutes. Then, I heard someone say, “fucking hell” and promptly leave.

I drove home in silence. I wanted to walk around somewhere, but it felt like it was too late at night to go to Hyde Park, so I went home, faffed around on YouTube, trying to distract myself, until I finally went to sleep and woke the next morning with a headache from how poorly I slept.

This film needs a trigger warning.

It’s brutal.

For the screening I was in, the guy next to me was sobbing for what felt like half the film.

When there wasn’t sobbing there were strained and heavy sighs emanating from everyone in the cinema.

This is a difficult film to watch. But saying that – it’s incredibly effective in realising its aim.

The film takes place in a Red Crescent call centre during the killing of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip.

The call centre staff are all played by actors.

The voice of Hind Rajab is the voice of the dead six-year-old.

The film runs like a thriller, following the shifts of Omar Alqam (Motaz Malhees), Rana Hassan Faqih (Saja Kilani), Mahdi Aljamal (Amer Hlehel), and Nisreen Jeries Qawas (Clara Khoury) at the Red Crescent. Their jobs are to help facilitate rescue and support for victims caught in the Gaza incursion.

Omar begins the shift by losing his first caller, a young woman named Sarah, and is already traumatised before his call to Hind Rajab begins.

As the enveloping tragedy ensues and Omar and Mahdi attempt to coordinate a rescue which – is infuriatingly elusive due to many bureaucratic and political reasons, the effect of the file footage of the real-life encounter of Hind Rajab’s call from 2024 is the most affecting inclusion in any film I’ve ever experienced. The actors engage with the real footage of this tragic call, and it’s almost impossible to watch. The knowledge of the fact of the recording constantly jolts you back into facing the reality that most of the world has tried so hard to ignore. This film refuses you the option of ignorance.

This film hits you with its immediacy and urgency so forcefully that at times my own mind was rearing away in self-preservation.

I do not recommend this film for a casual viewing, but only for people who are prepared to watch with a well of emotional labour ready to toil: with the immediate viewing and the inevitable afterthoughts that arise.

4/5 stars