By Zoha Naghar
What we were hearing wasn’t acting. There was no way to pause, no music to soften it. It was the voice of Hind Rajab. And something quietly asks you, long after the screen goes dark, will you act now that you’ve heard her?
Walking out of TIFF Lightbox, I felt something heavier than sorrow in my chest. The Voice of Hind Rajab is not just a film to be watched, but it is a truth you carry with you for as long as you can bear it. This isn’t a review in the traditional sense. It’s an attempt to share what it was like to be in that room twice.
The Voice of Hind Rajab is a docudrama that follows a young girl in Gaza who was killed by the Israeli military after they shot the car she and her family were in, with 335 bullets.
The first time I saw the film was at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) premiere on Sept. 7, where the cast was present in the room. As I sat in my seat, nerves took over. I knew what I was about to watch was real, and as soon as the film began, the theatre around me disappeared. I felt as if I was alone in the room, crying quietly, not just as a viewer but as a witness. I had an intense feeling of helplessness, but at the same time, I felt compelled and empowered to take action in any way I could to continue raising awareness for Gaza. Watching this film was incredibly difficult; it was terrifying, heartbreaking, and one of the hardest yet most important things I’ve ever watched.
As the docudrama came to an end, the audience rose in a standing ovation. People clapped, cheered and chanted “Free Palestine” from their seats, honouring truth, grief and the weight of what we had all just experienced.
The second time I watched it, the theatre was filled with keffiyehs. People came not just as filmgoers, but as a community. As the lights dimmed, a wave of tension swept through the room. From the first moment Rajab’s voice came through the speakers—fragile, terrified, heartbreakingly small—something in the room shifted. The separation between audience and screen disappeared.
And when the film ended, no one moved. People leaned forward with their heads in their hands, faces in darkness I couldn’t see, but I felt their tightened throats. Someone’s sleeve wiped away tears, their hands clasped, people’s stifling cries and sniffles filled the room, but no one spoke.
The theatre was mourning.
This wasn’t fiction. This was real. What we were hearing wasn’t acting. There was no way to pause, no music to soften it. It was an innocent 5-year-old Palestinian girl’s cry for help.
It was the voice of Hind Rajab.
Most of the story takes place in one space, the Red Crescent emergency call centre in Ramallah, West Bank. We see the responders trying to navigate the situation. But behind every word, every phone call, is the quiet weight of what they cannot do in time.
Director Kaouther Ben Hania avoids showing violence. There are no explosions, no blood. Instead, we sit with the tension. We hear Rajab on the line, sometimes being interrupted by the connection breaking or the sounds of bullets. We watch responders follow protocol. Even though most of us knew the outcome, as it was a real story in the news and on social media, we still waited and hoped.
The intensity doesn’t come from action, but from helplessness. You feel the pressure of bureaucracy. The way systems are built to protect can more often feel like walls closing in.
In that waiting, there is pain. In that inability to act, something inside you breaks.
At no point did The Voice of Hind Rajab feel like a celebration of film. Even the word “film” feels too soft. This is awareness. This is testimony. It is a demand for accountability.
To describe it in terms of acting or cinematography would be to ignore its purpose. Hind was real. Her fear was real. Her final words were real. Her mother gave permission for those words to be heard and for her story to be known.
She said Hind should not be forgotten.
There is a profound injustice in the fact that this story needed to be told at all. The Voice of Hind Rajab exists because Rajab’s death, like so many others in Gaza, has gone unseen by much of the world. This isn’t just about bearing witness to one tragedy. It’s about asking why tragedies like this are allowed to happen again and again, in the dark, with no global intervention and no justice.
There is a desperate need right now for the world to keep its eyes on Gaza and Palestine. Not only to mourn the martyrs, but to protect the living in this ongoing genocide. Not only to raise awareness, but to act. We cannot afford to wait for more films like this one. If more stories like Rajabs are being captured for future documentaries, then we have already failed again.
This film is necessary, but it should never have had to exist in the first place.
The cast brings grace and restraint to a film where the emotional stakes are already overwhelming. Saja Kilani, who portrays a dispatcher at the emergency call centre, delivers a performance that is quiet, focused, and emotionally devastating. She doesn’t act to impress. She acts to honour. Her stillness holds space for Rajab’s voice. Her reactions carry the weight of collective helplessness, and through her, the film gives us a human vessel for our grief.
Every actor in this project seemed to understand that this is not a space for over-the-top performance. It is a space for remembrance. Their work serves the story, never overshadows it.
If you go into The Voice of Hind Rajab looking for comfort, closure, clarity or entertainment, you won’t find it. This is not a tidy story. It is a scream. A record. A reckoning.
To sit in that theatre, in that silence, is to become part of something. Something that asks more of you. You don’t walk away from this film; you carry it with you.
I left thinking this is what it means to witness. Not to look and forget, but to listen until it aches. Not to turn away, but to hold that voice and pass it on. To recognize the geographical privilege I have and use it to help raise awareness, ensuring that a film like this doesn’t have to be created again. I couldn’t help but realize that this is only one out of the thousands of untold stories there must be in Gaza, and my heart sinks at the very thought.
If cinema can break through distance and make people open their eyes, if it can make someone across the world feel close enough to mourn, then this is more than a film. It is necessary. It is urgent. It is a global call to action.
The Voice of Hind Rajab is not something you finish watching. It is something you live with. Something you remember as her faint voice replays in your head. And something quietly asks you, long after the screen goes dark, will you act now that you’ve heard her?
Riadh Magazine 
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