In winter 2024, a six-year-old girl named Hind Rajab was killed alongside family members after Israeli forces fired 335 rounds into their car as they fled Gaza City.
The murder garnered international attention, but in Toronto, the news was overshadowed by a manufactured controversy after a pro-Palestine rally passed by Mount Sinai Hospital. That pushed Hind’s story out of the picture, temporarily. The new film The Voice of Hind Rajab memorializes it forever.
Written and directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, the film is set in a call centre in the Palestinian West Bank that coordinates ambulances in Gaza. It uses real audio of Hind’s devastating conversations with dispatchers.
The acting is fantastic, and it’s impossible not to be overcome with frustration as the Israeli occupation forces delay a nearby ambulance for hours and eventually kill the two paramedics coming to Hind’s rescue. This leaves the injured girl to die.
The result is a deeply affecting drama — when The Voice of Hind Rajab premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3, it received a nearly 24-minute ovation, more than any film in the festival’s history. Viewers at the opening at the Toronto International Film Festival later that month also gave the film a rousing ovation.
Though Hania’s film tells the story of just one of the over 18,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza, it insists on the humanity of the victims, on honouring the names and faces that make up the dizzying statistics.
The Voice of Hind Rajab is playing at TIFF until January 8, 2026.
This article appeared in the 2025 Oct/Nov issue.
