Listening to those recordings becomes the emotional center of the experience, allowing the audience to feel the fear, helplessness, and humanity behind the tragedy. The film doesn’t behave like a typical war movie. Instead, it feels more like a quiet act of remembering someone whose life was cut short. Since its release, the film has sparked powerful conversations about war, empathy, and responsibility, and its Academy Award nomination has helped bring Hind’s story to a much wider global audience.
In an exclusive interview with Parade Magazine, Ben Hania opened up about the emotional and creative decisions behind The Voice of Hind Rajab, and why she decided to center the film around Hind’s real voice. Moreover, she didn't shy away from talking about the difficult ethical questions that come with revisiting real tragedy and how Hind's family reacted when they got to know that she wanted to make a film on the tragic incident.
The Voice of Hind Rajab director Kaouther Ben Hania (Photo Credit: Shayan Asgharnia)Shayan Asgharnia
Kaouther Ben Hania: I think the fact that the movie is nominated says a lot about how things are shifting, at least within the Academy of the Oscars. I’m very grateful to all the voters and Academy members who watched the movie, listened to the voice of Hind Rajab, bore witness, and recognized it as an important film worthy of being nominated. Because my idea when I started making this movie was to find a way to make the voice of this little girl echo beyond frontiers, all over the world. And I think the platform of the Oscars is a great place to put her voice at the center and to say that there was a girl in Gaza called Hind Rajab. She loved the sea, but she couldn’t go to the sea and live her life—go to school with her brother, be with her mother—because she was atrociously killed by the Israelis.
Kaouther Ben Hania: No, I didn’t want to, how to say, make a forensic film. This is what you say, because the forensic work was already done. I mean, I couldn’t make a movie purely from my imagination, for example, because it’s a real story. And because of all this body of work done by Forensic Architecture, for example, and by other media outlets, I could say that if you want proof, you can find the proof through these organizations and on the internet. But starting from that point, I wanted to take cinema somewhere else. You know this happened—okay, this happened.
I don’t want to show you only what happened, but also what it meant to the people who went through this horrible crime. Especially because we are talking about Hind. We have her recording, but we also have those who listened—the Red Crescent employees. And she can’t go to the sea, live her life, go to school with her brother, or be with her mother.
SAJA KILANI, MOTAZ MALHEES, CLARA KHOURY IN THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB. (PHOTO CREDIT: WILLA)WILLA
Kaouther Ben Hania: I was already given something very strong, which is the recording of the last moments of Hind. This was a very, very heart-wrenching document. And because I had this document, I needed to put it at the center of the movie and take care of her voice. And in this movie, as you said, everything—everything about what was happening to Hind—is already in those recordings. So my job was not to do the mise-en-scène of what is said in the recording, but to add another space. Because sound is already a space, you know; you already have images within that sound. That’s why I felt like I didn’t need to create a spectacle of war around the death of this child.
The film operates in a fascinating space between narrative storytelling and documentary realism, especially with its use of reenactments paired with authentic audio. In a time when audiences are increasingly questioning cinematic authenticity, how do you approach the idea of truth in filmmaking? When does reconstruction risk become interpretation?
When films like The Voice of Hind Rajab or your earlier work Four Daughters take a clear political stance, some critics argue that they risk being viewed more as activism than as cinema. We saw similar debates last year around the distribution struggles of No Other Land. Do you think this criticism misunderstands the historic role of cinema as both an artistic and political medium?
Kaouther Ben Hania: I think that this is, how to say, like trying to dismiss these kinds of movies. I mean, for example, I’ll give you an example. There is a filmmaker called Peter Watkins. He made a movie called The Bomb about the bombing of the UK because of the fear of nuclear war, something we are also experiencing right now. His movie is very political, you know, but it is still cinema. So I don’t agree with critics when they say that cinema should not be political. We are political creatures. So if you talk about a human being, you are talking about politics, whether you want it or not. So we should at least try to assume it.
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Kaouther Ben Hania: You know, you make a movie because you can’t tell the thousands and thousands and thousands of stories of all the people killed, the civilians. So you always end up telling one story. And through this one story, you try to give a snippet of what is happening behind it. You give the audience this space so they can multiply the pain they feel for her with all those numbers of civilians. So yeah, I mean, Hind Rajab and her mother and her family didn’t want her to become a symbol. She’s a little girl, you know. But what happened to her went beyond her person and became something that speaks about the genocide. So yeah, she became a symbol, whether we want it or not.
You chose to make this film very quickly after the event occurred. Some filmmakers would argue that distance is necessary for historical clarity. Why did urgency matter more than temporal distance for you?
Kaouther Ben Hania: There are two choices, you know. People who talk like this are often thinking about World War II movies, because those movies came later, after everything had already happened. But after the Second World War, there was a huge change—we had trials for the criminals, we had accountability, and many other processes. I don’t think that in the case of the Palestinians, this will happen in two, three, or five years. I hope so, but we don’t know.
Photo Credit: Ammar Abd RabboAmmar Abd Rabbo
So there is something about being part of change now, rather than waiting for change that may or may not happen. And I don’t think it will happen like that, you know—waiting in a comfortable place and then making a movie about something that happened in the past, when everybody already regrets it, and everybody is against it. That is a more comfortable position for me as a filmmaker, but it’s not the best position for what is happening in Gaza.
Kaouther Ben Hania: The first thing I did, before even making the decision, was to talk to Hind’s mother. If she had told me she didn’t want it, or if she had even hesitated, I wouldn’t have done it. That was the decision. But Hind’s mother wanted her daughter not to be forgotten—not to become just another number, another child under the rubble, under the bullets. She wanted her daughter to be remembered. She is behind the movie, and she is also an advocate for the children in Gaza. So it’s a totally different position, you know. She’s a very strong woman.
You’ve said that cinema can break through indifference and restore empathy toward victims of war. But realistically, do you believe a film can influence geopolitical accountability, or is its power ultimately symbolic?
You can’t see its effect right now, because the world is going crazy. But at least we have a voice saying this is crazy. And I show in this movie how horrible it is, and that you simply can’t do this.
SAJA KILANI IN THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB (Photo Credit: WILLA)WILLA
Kaouther Ben Hania: Yes, I mean, every movie I did changed me in a very deep way. That's why I'm doing movies, because every movie is a new experience. And this is a very, very hard one, a hard experience, and a very big responsibility. It changed, I think, my belief in cinema; like before, I wasn't sure that cinema could affect people and could be a strong tool to change them. But while I was screening this movie and meeting the audience, a lot of people told me this movie changed me in a very deep way. And this is something very beautiful for a filmmaker to say. So it gave me faith back in the power of cinema.
Related: The Voice of Hind Rajab Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania Explains Why She Refused the Cinema For Peace Award in Berlin
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