"The voice of a 6-year-old begging for help should never be ignored or forgotten"

How do you capture and share the grief of real life? It’s a struggle to put into words the pain presented in The Voice of Hind Rajab.

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The Voice of Hind Rajab is a praiseworthy and immensely effective film which directly confronts its audience with the torment of the sieges in Gaza. The film uses the real-life audio of the 6-year-old Hind Rajab’s call to emergency services and, as a result, depicts the crushing and upsetting suffering inflicted on innocent people.

Real-life emergency

The staging of The Voice of Hind Rajab takes place in the Palestine Red Crescent Society emergency call centre. What follows is a dramatisation of the real-life emergency responders working valiantly in a system designed to block humanitarian aid, as those who put their lives on the line in an effort to help are only met with inhumane brutality as a response.

The real rubble of the destruction

When categorising the film within a genre, The Voice of Hind Rajab has been widely labelled as a ‘Docudrama’. This term is definitely fitting due to the use of the real voices and faces of the people involved. Stylistically, the film can also be read as a contemporary development of approaches to cinema like Italian neorealism or cinema verite. For example, Italian neorealist films like Roma Citta Aperta were shot in the real rubble of the destruction following World War II, heightening its narrative kick.

Genuine pain

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The Voice of Hind Rajab is similarly set firmly within the realism of its narrative. We are shown the real images of the rubble and torment inflicted. The film, using drama alongside the real elements in this fashion, then serves to reflect the actual suffering that has taken, and is taking, place off the screen. It should be said that Kaouther Ben Hania, the Tunisian director, importantly got the full permission of Hind Rajab’s mother for the film, a necessary step to avoid being exploitative when creating a dramatisation around the genuine pain the film is concerned with.

However, it does feel wrong to talk about the film as a piece of cinema alone. The Voice of Hind Rajab is not fictional. It is the genuine terror of a real-life little girl and is a film which should not be shied away from, despite its devastating subject. The voice of a 6-year-old begging for help should never be ignored or forgotten.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is at Studio 74, the Exeter Phoenix until January 29