This powerful docudrama is built around the 2024 audio recording of a call between Hind Rajab – a young girl seemingly alone in a damaged car in Gaza after a firefight – and the dispatchers at a Red Crescent emergency response centre. As the hours pass, the call centre team grows increasingly desperate as they attempt to coordinate a risky ambulance rescue – all while Hind is left alone with the sound of gunfire and explosions all around.
Using the striking formal device of the real-life audio recording paired with actors recreating the events in the call centre, Kaouther Ben Hania’s film is a devastating account of one of the most heartbreaking stories of the Gaza War.
Festivals:
Venice International Film Festival 2025
Cork International Film Festival 2025
Winner – Grand Jury Prize – Venice International Film Festival 2025
Dir: Kaouther Ben Hania
Starring: Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Clara Khoury
Reviews:
“★★★★★ What the film conveys so powerfully is the pain of wanting to change a situation which is agonisingly out of your hands.” – Nicholas Barber, BBC
“Kaouther Ben Hania’s film speaks with radical honesty… Hind Rajab’s story is almost too terrible to face, yet this film demands we bear witness.” – Leila Latif, Little White Lies
“[Ben Hania’s] hybrid docufiction gives searing form to the most wrenching material, recreating in real-time the final hours of a six-year-old girl in Gaza.” – Ben Croll, The Wrap
