For 70 minutes on January 29, 2024, a young girl named Hind Rajab, trapped in a car in war-torn Gaza, where an Israeli tank had just killed her family, pleaded with a Palestinian Red Cross team over the phone to save her. A recording of the six-year-old’s call forms the kernel around which Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s new film is built. A lightly fictionalised depiction of the young girl’s final hours and the despair of the medics who are only eight minutes away, yet unable to rescue her without jumping through multiple bureaucratic hoops, The Voice of Hind Rajab brought the audience to their feet at the ongoing Venice Film Festival, drawing applause that lasted a record-breaking 23 minutes.
In an interview after the screening, Ben Hania said, “When I first heard the voice of Hind Rajab, there was something beyond her words. It was the voice of Gaza itself calling for help — and no one could reach her.” In the very fact of their survival, the other children of Gaza seem luckier than Hind. Encountered on social media, they may even promise glimpses of an elusive hope or normalcy. There is, for example, 11-year-old aspiring chef Renad Attallah, who delights in cooking, using the pantry staples she gets in food aid boxes. Eight-year-old Ahmad Aaed, who cradles his cat Simba in one arm, proudly offers a tour of the tomato and zucchini plants in his container garden.
Yet, it is easy to see the rips and seams in these pictures of resilience: The canvas flaps of the tents in the background are a reminder of the homes these children have lost. In the roar of the aircraft that fly over them, briefly muffling their voices, is the ever-present threat of violence. If all that Gaza has endured since October 2023 can sometimes feel overwhelming to witness, its children, glimpsed in the infinite scroll of Instagram and TikTok, show what the world stands to lose if it looks away.
