Hind Rajab’s Voice Became the Loudest Ovation in Venice History

3 September 2025

From left, Saja Kilani, Kaouther Ben Hania and Motaz Malhees display a picture of Hind Rajab as they arrive for the premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab. Photograph: Ettore Ferrari/EPA

At the 82nd Venice Film Festival, the premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab stunned audiences into silence before igniting a standing ovation that lasted more than 23 minutes the longest in the festival’s history. It was an unforgettable moment that swept through the Sala Grande, leaving many in tears and spectators chanting "Free, free Palestine" as they rose to applaud.

Directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, the film tells the real-life tragedy of a five-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, killed along with her family and two medics by Israeli forces in Gaza in January 2024. Rather than depicting violence visually, the film uses Hind’s actual 70-minute phone call to the Palestinian Red Crescent, layered with haunting realism. These recordings, over which the film unfolds, are interwoven with dramatized sequences of emergency dispatchers responding to her desperate plea for help as bullets echo around.

Ben Hania has said that hearing Hind’s voice felt like hearing the voice of Gaza itself a symbol of a cry for help that went unanswered. The power of the voice became the film’s emotional core. The survivors of Gaza’s violence, the voices often silenced, are granted presence and gravity through Hind’s recorded words.

On the red carpet of the premiere, executive producers Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara walked alongside Ben Hania and the cast, clutching a framed photo of Hind Rajab. Their presence underscored the film’s weight and the solidarity behind it.

Critics and audiences alike saluted the film as one of the most urgent and impactful works unveiled this year. Reviewers called it "a shattering tale of tragedy in Gaza" and perhaps the most emotionally driven film of the festival.

The resonance of the film extends beyond cinema. Tunisia selected it as its official entry for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards. While no U.S. distributor has yet been confirmed, Ben Hania is optimistic that the ovation and Hollywood backing by names such as Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón, and Jonathan Glazer will help amplify the film’s reach.

At a press event, cast member Saja Kilani read a statement that asked, "Isn’t it enough already?" She emphasized that this was not propaganda or opinion, but truth that Hind’s voice carries the weight of thousands of children killed in Gaza, and by hearing it, we must choose memory over indifference.

Actor Motaz Malhees, who portrays an emergency dispatcher, shared that hearing Hind’s cry transported him straight back to his own childhood in Jenin, saying, “I felt as if I had died a thousand times.”

In many ways, The Voice of Hind Rajab is not just a film it is an act of bearing witness. Its most unforgettable scene is not on screen, but in the resounding silence, in the length of that ovation, and in the shared vow of every soul moved by it.