On January 29, 2024, Palestine's red crescent received the call from Hind Rajab. A five -year -old girl who was in a car shot by the Israel army. For hours the workers tried to coordinate a rescue operation that should be approved to ensure a safe route and that the ambulance was not bombed. During all that time, Hind Rajab listened to the shots and bombs while asking for help or comfort. After achieving approval, the ambulance was bombarded a few meters from the car where the girl was and Hind Rajab died. The murder was denied by Israel until when the remains of the bodies were found from the area. The car in which Hind Rajab died, his uncles and his four cousins had 355 shots.
That call was recorded and published on social networks. It was a clear example of how Israel committed discriminated murders. A genocide was being committed in front of everyone and was being recorded in images and sounds. The world, however, still did nothing. It has been more than a year since that call, and the massacre in Gaza continues. West stays in empty words while Netanyahu continues the extermination of a population.
When Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania heard that call stayed in shock. How was it possible for people to be immune to that? How were the cinema not taking the weapons it has, the cameras, to tell it? He left the project he had and began to think about what he could tell. The result is Hind's voicethe film that has shaken for men to the Venice Festival to wake up and become aware. The contest has been silent at the risk, courage, courage and accuracy of the director. There are no grip. There is nowhere to hide.
Ben Hania got the real call of Hind Rajab and makes her the center of her story. We hear what the red crescent workers heard and rebuilds, as if it were a thriller with a countdown, the work of those people for trying to save it. One knows the end and suffers at every minute, but the director does not force melodramatism. There is hardly any music, there are no torticeros resources. Only the real fact and a brutal honesty in what counts.
It also serves to raise a metacinematographic game about the power of the image and sound. We hear Hind's voice, and actors dramatize how the call was received, but they also overlap the real voice of those people and even at a given time, in which a call was recorded on the mobile we see the real video while the film actors recreating in a dialogue between reality and fiction that also makes think about what the cinema is for.
The press conference was one of the most exciting of the contest. Ben Hania – who before its premiere in Venice has received support as executive producers of names such as Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuarón or Jonathan Glazer, was received with a thunderous ovation and launched the clearest messages in a show that has avoided positioning and condemning the genocide as they asked for different associations and members of the Italian cinema industry Associated around the Venice4Palestine initiative.
Before starting the questions one of the protagonists read a statement on behalf of the film of the film in which they asked if “hasn't it been enough?” “Enough of hunger, of dehumanization, of the destruction that is happening in this occupation. The film does not need our defense. It is not a fantasy, it is not an opinion. It is the truth. The story of Hind is that of many people and his voice is one of the many of the children killed in Gaza these years,” they have begun saying.
When I heard the voice of Hind felt fury, I felt anger, but that voice was something else, it was Gaza's voice asking for help without anyone being able to give it to him
Kauther Ben Hania
— Film-maker
For them Hind's “is the voice of each daughter and son who have the right to live, to exist with dignity.” “Lives that have been stolen in front of our eyes. Behind each number, there is a story that is no longer going to be told. The question is how we have asked to allow a child to supply for his life. No one in the world will live in peace if a child has to beg for his life. We want his voice future of any child.
The filmmaker has defended a film because “cinema can build empathy, something that is missing, and make people watch the world from another point of view, in this case that of Palestinian people.” “When I heard the voice of Hind felt fury, I felt anger, but that voice was something else, it was Gaza's voice asking for anyone, he could go to give it to him,” he stressed and released a message to those who can accuse her of exploiting the real voice of a dead girl: “When you amplify the voice of the people in Palestine to those people. ”
He doesn't even believe it is the moment of justice. “It is important, but we are not even there, the important thing is to say enough. Enough of this genocide. In an ideal world would expect justice for Hind and all those who have been killed, but there is much to get there,” he said.
In the Venice pass and in the press conference they posed with her Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, and Ben Hania said about the support of several Hollywood stars. The fact that they have seen it believes that “it means something, because it must change that narrative that so far have given many means that what happened were collateral damage, because that dehumanizes people, and that is why cinema and art are important to give voice and face to those people.”
Next to him were also all the actors and actresses, including Motaz Malhees, who gives life to one of the workers of the red and Palestinian crescent who said that this is happening is not new: “I have already lived this. Hind's voice He returned me to my childhood. I have already died a thousand times. ”
