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The Doha Film Festival opened with a bang with the screening of award-winning The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film covering a harrowing phone call made by a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli fire in 2024 while trying to escape Gaza with her family.

Two months earlier, the film won the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Hind’s case sparked outrage across the world. The child was moving out of the danger zone with her uncle, aunt and cousins when their car was attacked. She miraculously survived long enough to make a frantic call to Red Crescent volunteers to get help but was eventually killed by Israeli fire.

The film, directed by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, dramatised the actual events, but featured Hind’s real voice. The entire conversation that the child had during her phone call with the volunteers of the Red Crescent Society has been included in the film.

It also features dramatised scenes inside the Red Crescent Society office, as volunteers spoke to the girl. Though the actors perfected their craft, the most impactful for the audience was the voice of the pleading child. Her pleas echoed those of the many other Palestinian children, calling on the world to take notice of their flight. As the audience listens to her voice on the phone call, they can hear gunfire by Israeli tanks as well.

At the opening of the film, Hind’s mother said, “Since the passing of Hind, I continue to look for my daughter. She is dead but I hear her voice every day. The voice of my daughter is the voice of children of Gaza. Save the children of Gaza before its last light goes out.” She said she had not watched the film and would not watch it because it was too overwhelming for her to bear. “I wish the children live instead of becoming martyrs,” she told the audience.

During the media talk, the director said she was preparing for another film in February 2024 when she heard about the incident. While watching the genocide of Palestinians, she started asking herself questions about the meaning of the art of cinema. “I heard her (Hind’s) voice and it stayed with me as if she was asking me to help.”

Ben Hania contacted the Red Crescent and they let her hear the complete recording, which she later used in her movie. She said she first thought of making a documentary on it but that would not have the same impact as a feature film. Al Jazeera had already made a documentary on the case.

Speaking about her decision to use Hind’s actual voice in the film instead of an actor’s, she said, “Her voice was alive and it needed to be there. Also, I did not want to show what had happened but I wanted to make people feel. The film is not just about the explanation.”

When asked why she chose story of just one child for the film when thousands of others were dying, she replied that one needed a story to understand other stories. “Gaza was asking for help, the story of this one child leads to other stories.“

Photos via Doha Film Institute