On January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Her name was Hind Rajab.
This is the searing premise of the 2025 highly acclaimed 2025 docudrama film 'The Voice of Hind Rajab', a movie written and directed by Kaouther Ben Hania. It follows the Red Crescent response to the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, by the Israel Defence Forces during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. It stars Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel, and Clara Khoury. The film is a co-production between Tunisia and France.
And on top of that, Hollywood superstars Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix are involved in the project as executive producers.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on 3 September 2025, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and six other parallel prizes. It was theatrically released in Tunisia on Sept 10, and was released in France on Nov 26 by The Party Film Sales.
It was selected as the Tunisian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, making the December shortlist. At the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, it was nominated for Best Non-English Language Film.
The movie also blended real audio recordings with scripted performances; the film retains the actual emergency call audio, highlighting the bitter and lonely moments of waiting.
A highly touted movie and a darling with movie critics around the world, 'The Voice of Hind Rajab' has been winning fans all around the globe, and is said to be one of the most enduring movies of 2025.
Recently, Primeworks Studios, the official distributors and the marketing partners of the movie, have captured public attention with the release of a 15-second teaser for their latest theatrical offering, 'The Voice of Hind Rajab', which has won many admirers and has already hit big numbers.
Furthermore, according to the top American media house, The Boston Globe, it wrote that ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ retells one of the most harrowing stories of the war in Gaza and is definitely worth watching for non-fiction movie fans and certainly has earned all its accolades around the world.
The 'Voice of Hind Rajab' is scheduled for Malaysian cinemas from January 8, 2026.
For the record, the death of Hind Rajab in January 2024 was investigated by Sky News, which found Israeli tanks were present in the area and likely to have fired at civilians. The movie dramatises this story.
As stated by the investigative news, the January 29, 2024, killing of Hind Rajab shocked the world after her desperate telephone calls with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) emergency services were recorded in real time and made public.
Hind and six of her relatives (the Hamada family) had been attempting to escape the fighting in Gaza City when their car came under attack.
The docudrama's director fuses Hind's actual voice with a dramatised performance to tell the story of her desperate cries for help.
Set inside the charity's West Bank call centre, the film reconstructs the resolute efforts of Red Crescent workers during a hopeless negotiation with the Israelis over a safe route for the rescue.
Over 90 minutes, an avoidable tragedy is played out from the perspective of the call handlers who listen, refuse to abandon hope, and sometimes fight over the rules of sending an ambulance out to a deadly mission.
The film invites an audience that already knows how the story ends to feel the long and frustrating wait, and to experience the complex Israeli protocols Palestinians have to live by, and certainly makes it a worthwhile watch for movie fans.
