emirates7 - Following the film's premiere at Cinema Akil, the Tunisian director speaks about what a five-year-old’s journey through hope and hopelessness in Gaza could have looked like
Picture this: a five-year-old girl is trapped in a car with relatives who have been shot dead. She calls the Palestinian Red Crescent offices in Ramallah for help where the rescue workers are tasked with calming her, assuring her a safe passage, even as they know it will not be so easy. That anger and anguish have both gone into the making of The Voice of Hind Rajab is evident from how the film confronts its audience, denying them any passage to simply look away from what happened in Gaza.
Recently, the film premiered at Cinema Akil and made space for more complex conversations on the war, and the unravelling that follows as we witness moral and psychological devastation. In a conversation with wknd., Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania speaks at length about the making of one of the most unsparing films of the year.
Edited excerpts from an interview:
Can you take us through that very first moment you heard Hind Rajab’s voice and decided to make a film on her? You have said that what truly haunted you about it was not just the violence, but also the silence around it.
When I heard Hind Rajab’s voice for the first time, I thought for a millisecond she was asking me to help her. I felt a sense of helplessness, and since I hate being helpless, I asked myself what I could do. It just so happened that I was a filmmaker who could possibly make a film on the subject. From this sense of helplessness was born a desire to not stay silent, to speak. I found her voice on social media where people are scrolling through the next imagery or video. It wasn’t the right space to honour her voice. I thought a movie would be a better option. They say when one person dies, it’s a tragedy; but when thousands die, it is a statistic. I think cinema can give voice to those thousands.
‘I felt a sense of helplessness’: Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania on ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Speaking of social media, since so much of the imagery was out there, do you think there was a collective desensitisation also taking place?
It’s a hard question. I don’t think we have become desensitised necessarily because of social media. You had a shift around the world. Young people had not become desensitised; they led movements around what happened in Gaza. But not everyone could grasp the scale of what was unfolding there. This is beyond unthinkable. The question I asked myself was—how do we talk about the genocide? And how does one make a movie on it that will remain etched till posterity? Hind Rajab did not want to become a symbol of what was happening in Gaza. And yet, she became one.
Your choice of telling the story from the vantage point of Red Crescent rescue workers was particularly interesting because then it is only left to a viewer’s imagination the horrors Hind Rajab might be experiencing. What made that setting important to you as a filmmaker?
It is a true story. There was a great piece of investigation on the killing of Hind Rajab and her family members featured in The Washington Post. As a filmmaker, I needed her voice to echo. There were two important choices to be made here. First was the point of view; I could have chosen to tell the story from Hind Rajab’s mother’s point of view, for example. I thought since I could not film Gaza, I needed to what was happening from a distance. The Red Crescent perspective worked best because they were far, like most of us. They are the ones who would do anything to save this girl’s life. So in a way, they are true heroes. The second choice was the form. I needed to tell this story in present tense—to go back to that moment when she was alive and it was possible to save her. How do you film present tense in cinema? You re-enact those moments with your actors. There are two spaces in the movie—one is the sound space, which is Hind’s voice and the other is image space, which is the Red Crescent office.
And what was it that the voice was able to convey that images couldn’t have?
First, her voice is a real document. This movie started with her voice, when I heard it first and approached Red Crescent to share the recordings. When I heard the recording, it was obvious that everything was there in the conversations. Everything was already there in the sound.
‘I felt a sense of helplessness’: Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania on ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
In the initial reviews of The Voice of Hind Rajab that were published after the screening at the Venice Film Festival, many critics registered a sense of discomfort over the use of real audio recordings of Hind Rajab. As a filmmaker, what gave you the conviction to use the real recordings?
I did not make this film to make people comfortable. I knew listening to the real voice would have been hard for the audience, but my purpose was not to protect them. I needed a confrontational film to showcase the horrors in Gaza. The idea was to bear witness to what has been happening there.
But does mere witnessing also become a part of complicity? In the film, two rescue workers—Omar and Rana—break down at their own helplessness.
This is a film about helplessness. Sometimes, feeling helpless pushes you to do something. Omar and Rana are the first ones to experience this helplessness because they are on the frontline. I chose to tell the story from their point of view because in a way, they represent all of us living across the world who have been hearing the cries of help coming from Gaza.
What did it take for you to live with these characters, this story day in and day out?
It was emotionally draining. But this movie gave us meaning about what we are doing as artistes. Especially for the actors because all of them are Palestinians. Telling this story, for us, was about putting our art in service of our stories. We were emotionally overwhelmed but we felt we were doing something important. We also felt a sense of privilege—we weren't in Gaza, we were making a film on it. We could not have collapsed emotionally because we wanted others to witness the story of Hind Rajab.
Can you recall the first meeting you had with Hind Rajab’s family?
I needed her family’s consent to make this film, especially her mother’s approval. The first thing I did was to talk to her mother. I called her and she was in Gaza at the time. She hadn’t had the time to properly mourn her daughter. There were bombings taking place and she was moving from one place to another. But we had a long conversation and she told me, ‘I want justice for my daughter. So, if this film is able to do that, so be it.’ This was our first conversation, and then we grew close. I wanted to her the film once it was completed but she said it was still too raw for her. She asked me to the film to her brother for feedback. And then finally, after she was evacuated from Gaza, we met at Doha Film Festival where the film was screened at the opening ceremony.
‘I felt a sense of helplessness’: Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania on ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
You grew up in a town where there were no theatres. From there to now where your films have made it to the Oscars shortlist, you have had an incredible journey. How would you describe it?
I do things out of passion—and anger. I am an angry person. I wanted to become a filmmaker because it allowed me to express myself. I love my job. We often think of cinema as entertainment but it can be something else. It can be a tool to give voice to the voiceless. But also, we need to tell stories of the Arab world. I am a Tunisian, but I don’t just tell stories about that country. My last film was based in Syria. This one is about Palestine. The cultures that don’t tell their stories find it difficult to exist because they don’t get to form narratives. I had several proposals to do English-speaking films, but I could not bring myself to make them. There are a lot of such films and you even find immediate success with them. For an Arabic film you have to fight twice as hard. And I like fighting if it’s worth it.
The film is Tunisia’s official entry to the Oscars. It’s even made it to the 15-film shortlist. What will change if it does win?
I am not sure if we will win because we simply don’t have those tools that other big budget films have. It was quite complicated to distribute the film in the US. What happens when you win an Oscar is that even those people who are not interested in an issue begin to sit back and take note. We need to win an Oscar so that people may hear the voice of Gaza.
Picture this: a five-year-old girl is trapped in a car with relatives who have been shot dead. She calls the Palestinian Red Crescent offices in Ramallah for help where the rescue workers are tasked with calming her, assuring her a safe passage, even as they know it will not be so easy. That anger and anguish have both gone into the making of The Voice of Hind Rajab is evident from how the film confronts its audience, denying them any passage to simply look away from what happened in Gaza.
Recently, the film premiered at Cinema Akil and made space for more complex conversations on the war, and the unravelling that follows as we witness moral and psychological devastation. In a conversation with wknd., Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania speaks at length about the making of one of the most unsparing films of the year.
Edited excerpts from an interview:
Can you take us through that very first moment you heard Hind Rajab’s voice and decided to make a film on her? You have said that what truly haunted you about it was not just the violence, but also the silence around it.
When I heard Hind Rajab’s voice for the first time, I thought for a millisecond she was asking me to help her. I felt a sense of helplessness, and since I hate being helpless, I asked myself what I could do. It just so happened that I was a filmmaker who could possibly make a film on the subject. From this sense of helplessness was born a desire to not stay silent, to speak. I found her voice on social media where people are scrolling through the next imagery or video. It wasn’t the right space to honour her voice. I thought a movie would be a better option. They say when one person dies, it’s a tragedy; but when thousands die, it is a statistic. I think cinema can give voice to those thousands.
‘I felt a sense of helplessness’: Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania on ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Speaking of social media, since so much of the imagery was out there, do you think there was a collective desensitisation also taking place?
It’s a hard question. I don’t think we have become desensitised necessarily because of social media. You had a shift around the world. Young people had not become desensitised; they led movements around what happened in Gaza. But not everyone could grasp the scale of what was unfolding there. This is beyond unthinkable. The question I asked myself was—how do we talk about the genocide? And how does one make a movie on it that will remain etched till posterity? Hind Rajab did not want to become a symbol of what was happening in Gaza. And yet, she became one.
Your choice of telling the story from the vantage point of Red Crescent rescue workers was particularly interesting because then it is only left to a viewer’s imagination the horrors Hind Rajab might be experiencing. What made that setting important to you as a filmmaker?
It is a true story. There was a great piece of investigation on the killing of Hind Rajab and her family members featured in The Washington Post. As a filmmaker, I needed her voice to echo. There were two important choices to be made here. First was the point of view; I could have chosen to tell the story from Hind Rajab’s mother’s point of view, for example. I thought since I could not film Gaza, I needed to what was happening from a distance. The Red Crescent perspective worked best because they were far, like most of us. They are the ones who would do anything to save this girl’s life. So in a way, they are true heroes. The second choice was the form. I needed to tell this story in present tense—to go back to that moment when she was alive and it was possible to save her. How do you film present tense in cinema? You re-enact those moments with your actors. There are two spaces in the movie—one is the sound space, which is Hind’s voice and the other is image space, which is the Red Crescent office.
And what was it that the voice was able to convey that images couldn’t have?
First, her voice is a real document. This movie started with her voice, when I heard it first and approached Red Crescent to share the recordings. When I heard the recording, it was obvious that everything was there in the conversations. Everything was already there in the sound.
‘I felt a sense of helplessness’: Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania on ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
In the initial reviews of The Voice of Hind Rajab that were published after the screening at the Venice Film Festival, many critics registered a sense of discomfort over the use of real audio recordings of Hind Rajab. As a filmmaker, what gave you the conviction to use the real recordings?
I did not make this film to make people comfortable. I knew listening to the real voice would have been hard for the audience, but my purpose was not to protect them. I needed a confrontational film to showcase the horrors in Gaza. The idea was to bear witness to what has been happening there.
But does mere witnessing also become a part of complicity? In the film, two rescue workers—Omar and Rana—break down at their own helplessness.
This is a film about helplessness. Sometimes, feeling helpless pushes you to do something. Omar and Rana are the first ones to experience this helplessness because they are on the frontline. I chose to tell the story from their point of view because in a way, they represent all of us living across the world who have been hearing the cries of help coming from Gaza.
What did it take for you to live with these characters, this story day in and day out?
It was emotionally draining. But this movie gave us meaning about what we are doing as artistes. Especially for the actors because all of them are Palestinians. Telling this story, for us, was about putting our art in service of our stories. We were emotionally overwhelmed but we felt we were doing something important. We also felt a sense of privilege—we weren't in Gaza, we were making a film on it. We could not have collapsed emotionally because we wanted others to witness the story of Hind Rajab.
Can you recall the first meeting you had with Hind Rajab’s family?
I needed her family’s consent to make this film, especially her mother’s approval. The first thing I did was to talk to her mother. I called her and she was in Gaza at the time. She hadn’t had the time to properly mourn her daughter. There were bombings taking place and she was moving from one place to another. But we had a long conversation and she told me, ‘I want justice for my daughter. So, if this film is able to do that, so be it.’ This was our first conversation, and then we grew close. I wanted to her the film once it was completed but she said it was still too raw for her. She asked me to the film to her brother for feedback. And then finally, after she was evacuated from Gaza, we met at Doha Film Festival where the film was screened at the opening ceremony.
‘I felt a sense of helplessness’: Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania on ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
You grew up in a town where there were no theatres. From there to now where your films have made it to the Oscars shortlist, you have had an incredible journey. How would you describe it?
I do things out of passion—and anger. I am an angry person. I wanted to become a filmmaker because it allowed me to express myself. I love my job. We often think of cinema as entertainment but it can be something else. It can be a tool to give voice to the voiceless. But also, we need to tell stories of the Arab world. I am a Tunisian, but I don’t just tell stories about that country. My last film was based in Syria. This one is about Palestine. The cultures that don’t tell their stories find it difficult to exist because they don’t get to form narratives. I had several proposals to do English-speaking films, but I could not bring myself to make them. There are a lot of such films and you even find immediate success with them. For an Arabic film you have to fight twice as hard. And I like fighting if it’s worth it.
The film is Tunisia’s official entry to the Oscars. It’s even made it to the 15-film shortlist. What will change if it does win?
I am not sure if we will win because we simply don’t have those tools that other big budget films have. It was quite complicated to distribute the film in the US. What happens when you win an Oscar is that even those people who are not interested in an issue begin to sit back and take note. We need to win an Oscar so that people may hear the voice of Gaza.