Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab has been nominated for Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language at the Golden Globes, adding fresh momentum to one of the most talked-about titles of this awards season.
The docudrama revisits the final hours of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza in January 2024 after becoming trapped with her relatives in a car under Israeli fire.
Using actors alongside real audio recordings of Hind’s phone call to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the film unfolds almost entirely inside an emergency dispatch centre, following medics as they try – and fail – to reach her.
The film is nominated alongside It Was Just An Accident (Iran and France), No Other Choice (South Korea), The Secret Agent (Brazil, France, Germany and the Netherlands), Sentimental Value (Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the UK) and Sirat (Spain and France) in its category.
The film uses actors alongside real audio recordings of Hind’s phone call for help. Photo: Mime Films & Tanit Films
Premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival in September, The Voice of Hind Rajab received a lengthy standing ovation and won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s second-highest honour, along with several parallel awards.
When Ben Hania first discovered the audio, she was horrified. "It was one of the most difficult things I’ve heard in my life," she told The National at the festival.
Though she had been working on another project, she put it aside, realising the urgency of telling Hind’s story. The film was shot over three weeks in Tunisia last November, but only after she first approached Rajab’s mother to seek permission to use
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