For its director, 'The Voice of Hind Rajab' ensures its subject's words 'will echo'

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Sixteen weeks after Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in the attacks of Oct.7, 2023, the Israeli military’s response landed with horrific force on a little girl trapped in a car with six dead relatives in Gaza City.

“Come get me, please,” 6-year-old Hind Rajab pleaded over the phone, in Arabic, to volunteers at the Palestine Red Crescent Emergency Call Center in Ramallah, 56 miles away in the West Bank.Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania remembers being in L.A.promoting one of her movies when she first heard an audio clip of Hind’s voice circulating online.

“It’s something you can’t unhear,” Ben Hania said, speaking from New York City.“I felt helpless when I heard this little girl.

For me, to not feel helpless, I felt I should do this movie.Everything else seemed trivial.”To make “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” winner of the Venice Film Festival’s grand jury award and now Oscar-nominated for international feature, the writer-director set aside her next project.

“It was a period piece about the beauty of art, and this just wasn’t the time,” she explained.Instead, Ben Hania, who’s earned previous Academy Award nominations for “The Man Who Sold His Skin” and “Four Daughters,” secured permission from Hind’s mother, Wesam, to tell her daughter’s story.Then she listened to all 70 minutes of the original audio archive from Red Crescent and decided to visualize Hind’s voice as digital sound waves that take up the entire screen.

“I’ve experimented with documentary and fiction forms before, so I’ve learned how to make radical choices,” Ben Hania said.“In this movie, nothing mattered more than what Hind is saying.

That’s the central thing.” The voice led Ben Hania to the listeners.“I felt as if Hind was talking to me, but she was talking to the Red Crescent dispatchers, so I felt their perspective was precious.”Ben Han...