The Voice of Hind Rajab

This is not an easy review to write. Normally, I might lace my words with humour, but here that feels impossible. How can you even rate a work like this? How do you measure a film that is less an entertainment than an act of witness?

When I first heard about The Voice of Hind Rajab, I’ll admit I was sceptical. Festival line-ups so often include political works that are celebrated more for their message than their artistry, and that has always troubled me. Cinema, at its best, should be for everyone, not reduced to a vessel for ideology, however just the cause may be. I feared this might be another “quota” selection, applauded for its subject before the film had even been seen. But I could not have been more wrong.

What unfolds here is cinema in its purest, most urgent form, a devastating fusion of documentary and fiction in which nothing feels staged, because nothing is. The actors do not perform so much as re-enact what truly happened, and at the very centre is Hind Rajab herself.

She is five years old. Her family has been killed. She is trapped in a car, surrounded by their bodies, just eight minutes away from safety. And she cries for help, lost, unable to understand why no one can reach her. We, watching, cannot understand either. Her small voice whispers in terror, confessing she is more afraid of the darkness than of the tanks outside. On the other end of the line, the rescuers plead and strategise, desperately trying to carve a path for an ambulance that never comes.

What makes this so difficult to bear is that we hear Hind’s real voice- her actual calls to the Crescent Moon rescue centre, woven into the film. She is not performing, and we never see her. We only hear her words, while a photograph of her is pinned to the wall.

The film plays out almost in real time, and the effect is shattering. It is not a tear-jerker, but a vice that tightens with every passing second. Suspense arises not from plot twists, but from impotence. You sit paralysed, unable to help, as minutes stretch and hope withers. Around me, people sobbed openly; some fled the theatre, unable to endure it. And still the screen held its gaze, insisting we bear witness. For us, it is ninety minutes. For Hind, it was eternity.

It is impossible to watch The Voice of Hind Rajab and remain unchanged. This is not only the strongest contender for the Golden Lion, it is the film that, above all others, demands to be seen.