This is why I could never be a leader of a country. “Collateral damage” according to the war hawks in governments across the world is necessary to maintain peace and order across the planet. What those leaders see as another number, I can never unhear as Hind Rajab, trapped in a horrific situation not of her own making. So my greatest thanks to Kaouther Ben Hania, writer/director of The Voice of Hind Rajab, which I would make every leader considering starting a war watch and experience all the way though, so they know what the human consequences of their decisions sounds like.
In this case, that sound is a very scared 6 year old girl, Hind Rajab. New call center employee Omar A. Alqam (Mota Malhees) picks up the call from the Red Crescent offices, running emergency services during the Israeli Gaza conflict in 2024. Knowing the danger she is in, Omar escalates the call. He brings in veteran employee Rana Hassan Faqih (Saja Kilani) to help keep the girl calm. He also activates Mahdi M. Aljamal (Amer Hlehel) and Nisreen Jeries Qawas (Clara Khoury) to coordinate the saving of Hind. However, negotiating an ambulance pickup while a war is going on is, um, not the simple discussion you’d hope it would be.
Kaouther Ben Hania sure makes it clear the toll Red Crescent emergency call center operators are under. We are all poor Omar here, forced to just listen to a helpless 6 year old girl ask for someone to come for her, while begging Mahdi to send an ambulance only a mile away, which he can’t due to fighting going on nearby making the risk too great for his ambulance drivers. There’s therapists on staff to calm Omar down over and over again during this several hour ordeal, with him barely hanging on. Even seasoned vet Rana sheds multiple tears here, as Hind Rajab’s plight breaks through her tough exterior. Hania’s psuedo documentary script shows us the impossible task everyone has. Omar and Rana to keep a girl talking, quiet and safe for multiple hours during an Israeli siege, Mahdi trying to coordinate Israeli and Palestinian armies to ceasefire, with the UN support and medical team, and Nisreen trying to keep everyone involved from slitting each other’s throats from anger and frustration.
The hard part of The Voice of Hind Rajab is how to keep the storytelling propulsive, as this all has to happen over several hours. Kaouther Ben Hania sort of maps out the story like a 90 minute action movie. In this case, the action sequences are the calls between Hind and Omar/Rana. So that means 6 15 minute sections. Open and close with the tense sequence, and have the fallout discussed in the middle. That means 6 different call topics, and 6 different character pairings to keep the movie interesting and not spin its wheels. This is just enough for Hania to make Hind Rajab go the distance, using different emotional beats: tension, despair, frustation, panic, elation, etc to hope against hope that The Voice of Hind Rajab will turn into a face and person we can save and see in reality.
The Voice of Hind Rajab shows better than most why war is hell. Yes the violence is awful and dehumanizing. But moreso is a 6 year old girl everyone with a heart wants to help, and simply, cannot. That’s gotta be level 5 or 6 on Dante’s 9 circles of hell, for sure.