The Voice of a Six-Year-Old Palestinian Girl Pierces the Soul
The film "The voice of Hind Rajab"
On 29 January 2024, six-year-old Hind Rajab is trapped in a car in Northern Gaza with 355 bullets in it, and the bodies of her aunt, uncle and four cousins.
The haunting recordings of the child’s voice pleading to be rescued are the subject of a film made by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania.
The recordings were made by the Red Crescent emergency call centre in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, whose volunteers poured their hearts into maintaining the connection with the little girl whilst their colleague desperately tried to assemble a rescue team.
The cast of the film embody the group of Red Crescent volunteers trained to take emergency calls, their boss, whose job it is to coordinate rescue teams, and a supervisor/counsellor for the call takers, who steps in to support them when, for example, someone dies on the line whilst asking to be rescued.
The volunteers first priority is to try to ascertain the full name of the frightened child, her whereabouts, who she is with, their relationship to her, and their medical status, and whether she is under fire. From then on, their job becomes increasingly demanding as they seek to maintain contact and somehow reassure her. This process lasts an agonising four hours, during which the volunteers take turns in keeping the child calm, whilst their own tempers occasionally fray at the lack of progress in the rescue operation, and disputes break out.
For, although an ambulance has been located just 8 minutes away from the child’s location, the procedure of authorisation from the Israeli army is convoluted. Contact has first to be made with the Red Cross in Geneva, who then request an allocated route from an agency in Israel, who subsequently liaise with the Israeli army, and, in time, an allocated route is fed back through the same labyrinthine chain of intermediaries. After an allocated route is finally given, the Red Crescent must still wait for the “green light” via the same circuitous mechanism in order to proceed.
When finally both an allocated route and the “green light” are given, the atmosphere is charged with hope as an ambulance draws ever closer to the child’s location and reports having sight of the damaged car, when suddenly all goes silent. Both the car and the ambulance had been blown up. Israeli tanks are equipped with infra-red sensors that detect life through heat. Dead bodies don’t issue heat. They knew there was still life in the bullet-riven car.
It takes 12 days for both the Red Crescent and Hind’s mother to find out that she and the paramedics are dead, and to be able to visit the location of the wrecked car and ambulance.
The intense violence permeating the background of the film is the silent type, the systemic violence of the Israeli army whose methods, according to the actor Amer Hlehel who plays the rescue coordinator, are designed to make the Palestinians break under frustration and desperation and start fighting one another.
We have seen how the degree of cruelty of the Israeli army has deepened as the war on Gaza has extended. This is because perpetrators of cruelty resort to ever more extreme acts of violence in order to silence the nagging fear that builds inside them.
The film is neither a documentary nor a narrative. It is the opening of a window of access into the offices of the Red Crescent in Ramallah, that places us on the line with a child pleading to be rescued.
There are no reconstructed scenes of bloodied or mutilated bodies. No images of bombed out buildings. It is not a film about numbers of dead and injured. It is a film about feeling, about meaning, about empathy and goodness in extreme conditions. And, in a time of mass indoctrination and numbed senses, it is testimony of enduring humanity.
At the British Film Institute where the film was screened on 21 February to a packed audience, the director Kaouther Ben Hania and three of the main actors spoke of the making of the film. Ben Hania said she thought very carefully about how to craft the film in the most unadulterated and respectful way. How to avoid making a spectacle from a tragedy, while preserving the story’s impact. She worked closely with Hind’s family, as the cast worked with the volunteers of the Red Crescent. The result is a work of art brought to us by the exceptional sensitivity and awareness of Ben Hania.
Actress Saja Kilani who plays Rana, the volunteer who spends most time on the line with Hind, explained that the cast chose not to hear the recordings during preparation for the film. So when shooting began, their responses to Hind’s voice were raw, and their tear-stained faces entirely real. She also explained that, as the film was shot chronologically, the cast’s emotions built as the story unfolded.
Actress Clara Khoury who plays Nisreen, the extraordinarily calming councillor, explained that, although the cast portrayed only a few hours out of the lives of the people they played, they built up relationships with them over time, in order to understand every detail of their personalities to be able to give a faithful representation of those hours.
Following the film’s September world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the grand jury prize, it received a 23-minute standing ovation.
But awards aside, what no-one who sees the film will be able to forget are the words reiterated by the six-year-old Hind throughout the long hours of communications with the Red Crescent volunteers: “Come and get me. Please come and get me!”
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