Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania comes into official competition at the Venice Mostra with her new feature film The Voice of Hind Rajab (Hind Rajab’s voice). This selection confirms the international influence of one of the most singular voices of contemporary Arab cinema, just a few months after His Oscar appointment For Olffa’s girls (Daughters oven)).
In an overwhelming declaration, Kaouther Ben Hania returns to the meteoric genesis of this project born from a personal shock. It was in the countryside for the Oscars, while she was preparing to shoot a film that she had been preparing for ten years, that an audio recording will upset everything. During a stopover at Los Angeles airport, she hears the voice of a little girl calling for help: ” I heard a recording of Hind Rajab which begged that we come to help him. I immediately felt a mixture of overwhelming sadness and helplessness. It was physical, as if the soil collapsed under me. I could not continue as planned. »»
Hind Rajab, 6, is a Palestinian child from Gaza. On January 29, 2024, when his family tried to flee the Israeli bombings, their car was targeted. Hind is the only survivor, hidden in the vehicle with the bodies of her relatives. She calls for help via a mobile phone. The recording of his voice – which has become viral – captures in real time waiting, fear, loneliness. Despite the alert launched by the Red Crescent, the child will never be rescued. She was found dead a few days later, with the rescuers sent for her. The car that transported them had received 355 bullets.
Deeply marked by this drama, the director comes into contact with the Hind family, with the Red Crescent teams, and obtains the entire original audio, seventy minutes of an unbearable recording. It is from these real voices and these testimonies that she decides to build a fictional film: The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The film is based on a minimalist device: a unique place, no image of violence, but an oppressive offset. An assumed choice: ” Violent images are everywhere around us: on our screens, our phones. What I wanted to show is the invisible – waiting, fear, unbearable silence when nobody comes. »»
In this staging of expectations, silence, inaction in the face of emergency, Kaouther Ben Hania questions what cinema can still say, what it can preserve in the face of the acceleration of media time. For her, The Voice of Hind Rajab is not only a film on Gaza: ” This story does not only speak of Gaza. She evokes a universal mourning. Cinema can preserve a memory. It can withstand amnesia. That Hind Rajab’s voice is heard. »»
Produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha, Odessa Rae and James Wilson, the film was supported by Totem Films for international sales. He also benefited from a subsidy of the support fund for artistic and literary creation, under the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs.
After Beauty and pack,, The man who sold his skin or Olffa’s girlsKaouther Ben Hania continues to explore the flaws of the world through singular devices. With The Voice of Hind Rajabshe signs a film of resistance and memory, where cinema becomes both listening, homage, and crying against oblivion.
Neïla Driss
