A devastating, urgent docudrama built around the real emergency call from a trapped five-year-old in Gaza. It is less a conventional narrative than a witness statement, using restraint and proximity to make helplessness feel immediate and unbearable.
97% ★★★★★ (128,550)
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Where to watch: Hulu
Movie · Drama · History · NR
2025 · 1h 29m · ★ 97% (129K)
The voices on the phone are real.
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Starring: Hind Rajab, Motaz Malhees, Saja Kilani
Overview
January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A five-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.
Director
Kaouther Ben Hania
Production
Mime Films, Tanit Films, Film4 Productions, MBC Studios, Amed Khan Foundation, Stiching Giustra International Foundation
Cast
Hind Rajab, Motaz Malhees, Saja Kilani, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury, Nesbat Serhan, Ramy Brahem
Where to watch
Hulu
Curator Review
Verdict
A devastating, urgent docudrama built around the real emergency call from a trapped five-year-old in Gaza. It is less a conventional narrative than a witness statement, using restraint and proximity to make helplessness feel immediate and unbearable.
Best for
Viewers drawn to politically urgent cinema
Audiences comfortable with intense, emotionally punishing material
Fans of docudrama and real-time procedural tension
People interested in contemporary Middle East history and human-rights storytelling
Skip if
You want escapist entertainment or emotional comfort
You are sensitive to child endangerment, war violence, or distressing audio
You prefer distance, ambiguity, or purely fictionalized drama
You are looking for a fast-paced plot rather than an act of witnessing
Overview
The Voice of Hind Rajab is not interested in persuasion through argument so much as confrontation through presence. By centering the real emergency call and the frantic attempts to reach the child, it turns bureaucracy, delay, and distance into a form of horror. The result is stripped-down, immediate, and morally crushing.
Worth noting
Kaouther Ben Hania’s approach gives the film a tense procedural shape, but the emotional force comes from its refusal to soften the facts. It is a work of witness first and cinema second, though the filmmaking is precise enough to make that distinction feel artificial. The sound design and controlled framing keep the audience trapped in the same unbearable waiting as the responders.
Bottom line
This is not an easy recommendation, and it is not meant to be. For viewers willing to engage with cinema as testimony, it is one of the most searing and necessary films of the year. Its power lies in how little it allows you to look away.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Joe A · 11039 likes
What I write here doesn’t matter. The movie speaks for itself. Free Palestine, now and forever.
davidehrlich · 6642 likes
the horror is still unfathomable, the helplessness all too familiar. both should haunt us for the rest of history.
Viktor Toth · 5577 likes
Not a single word should be spent trying to intellectualise this film. It speaks for itself. Free Palestine.
Terence Ang 洪偉凱 (4★) · 2860 likes
"Do you really think the voice of a terrified little girl will spark their empathy?" There is no war in Gaza. There is only genocide. We are witnessing the most well-documented and live-streamed genocide in human history, and we're powerless to stop it. We're "moved," but are we really moving? [QCinema International Film Festival 2025, Gateway Mall]
Jack Warren (5★) · 2526 likes
Probably does the most important thing that cinema can do
A harrowing investigation into conflict, family trauma, and the long aftermath of political violence.
Themes
war and civilian suffering, child endangerment, real-time rescue attempt, bureaucratic helplessness, testimony and witness, trauma and grief, political violence, media and recorded reality
Topics
war drama, docudrama, political cinema, human rights, real-time tension, trauma, Gaza, procedural, grief, activist cinema