“The voice of Hind Rajab” is the neo-realist masterpiece of our time

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This year's Venice Film Festival will be remembered, for years to come, for The voice of Hind Rajab. Prima della proiezione del pomeriggio nella Sala Grande con la troupe del film, già al mattino c’era stato un lunghissimo, inusuale applauso durante la proiezione riservata ai giornalisti. Un applauso carico di pain, e, forse, della consapevolezza di quanta responsabilità ci portiamo dentro, collettivamente, come umanità tutta, per ciò che oggi a Gaza e in tutta la Palestina sta arrivando alla sua soluzione finale: il sacrificio di un intero popolo, a cominciare dai suoi bambini, affinché possa realizzarsi il progetto coloniale, espansionistico e nazionalista del movimento sionista International, which finds in Israel its flag.

Gli interminabili minuti di applausi della proiezione ufficiale, la platea che ha gridato “Free Palestine” e l’attore Motaz Malhees, palestinese originario di Jenin, che ha mostrato la bandiera palestinese offertagli da alcuni spettatori, hanno dunque impresso il segno a un Festival che non poteva, non doveva svolgersi nel segno del business as usual. Gli attivisti di Venice4Palestine hanno provato, con la loro lettera aperta e le loro iniziative di boicottaggio, a portare il conflitto all’interno della kermesse, grazie al coinvolgimento di personalità schierate appartenenti al mondo del cinema. Ma di una cosa va dato merito all’organizzazione stessa della Mostra: di aver selezionato questo film e di averlo inserito nel concorso principale.

And he could win it. Because The Voice of Hind Rajab It's a great film. Kaouther Ben Hania, la sapiente regista tunisina già candidata all’Oscar per Four Daughters, dà corpo al neorealismo del Ventunesimo secolo, facendo quello che solo il cinema neorealista nella sua più alta espressione riuscì a fare: portare, in arte, la verità della condizione umana in un preciso momento storico. Lo fa attraverso un innesto quanto mai sapiente fra le reali registrazioni della voce della bambina – uccisa il 29 gennaio 2024 dopo ore trascorse dentro un’auto, unica superstite della sua famiglia trucidata da un attacco dell’esercito durante un’evacuazione – mentre chiedere aiuto durante una telefonata alla Palestinian Red Crescent; The superb, disarming acting of the performers, who embody the staff of the humanitarian organisation. “It was not acting, it was reacting”, explained actress Clara Khoury at a press conference, saying that the actors embodied their roles by listening to the child’s actual voice recordings, transported by their real emotions. “All the tears you see were real. During the film, we fully lived all the feelings you see portrayed”, recounted Saja Kilani. “For me, this film was never acting; as a Palestinian, it was reliving my own life. And at times, I couldn’t go on: I had panic attacks twice, and I have to thank the rest of the cast for the help they offered me”, explained Malhees again.

The film takes place entirely within the offices of the Red Crescent in the West Bank, which also handle requests from Gaza after the destruction of those on site. We see, in constant close-up and extreme close-up, the faces of the operators taking the calls. Initially on the phone is Hind Rajab's cousin, who will also be killed shortly after; then the uncle, contacted in desperation by Germany, poi la bambina. Con la quale parleranno per ore, mentre provano ad avviare i soccorsi che potrebbero salvarla. E, nell’assistere a come funziona la grande macchina che consente i soccorsi per Gaza, noi spettatori capiamo a un livello forse mai così d’impatto fino a che punto i palestinesi vivono e resistono all’interno di una gigantesca trappola per topi, costruita dall’esercito israeliano con un sadismo e una ferocia tutt’altro che spontanee, al contrario freddamente, scientificamente organizzate.

In fact, it would have been enough for the nearest ambulance to take eight minutes to reach Hind Rajab to save her, Hood, as she herself presents herself to the operators. Eight minutes that will become hours, in the growing desperation and tension of the operators, because the rescues must be coordinated, through the intercession of international bodies and the Israeli army. Which ultimately has the right to open and close the guaranteed channels for ambulances to pass. Or to decide who lives and who dies.

Inside the offices of the Crescent Moon – which we observe as a veritable situation room similarly, paradoxically, to the presidential one staged by a purely adrenaline-fuelled film like The House of Dynamite di Katherine Bigelow pure mostrato in questa edizione del concorso –  la tensione sale, e si arriva presto anche agli scontri verbali e fisici fra chi, come Omar, vorrebbe saltare tutti i passaggi burocratici e far arrivare subito l’ambulanza, e chi invece, come il capo del coordinamento Mahdi, sa quanto i paramedici stessi rischino la vita, e quanto coordinarsi con le diverse autorità sia essenziale per non mandarli al sacrificio. Sull’ambulanza ci sono Yousef Zaïno e Ahmed Madhoun. Mahdi in ufficio tiene un poster con tutti i ritratti dei colleghi morti mentre prestavano soccorso. Non può e non vuole sacrificarne neanche uno di più, dice.

And so the minutes turn into hours. Hours during which they all talk, talk and talk to Hind, on the other end of the phone, who recounts what she sees, recounts that she is afraid, afraid of the gunshots but also afraid of the approaching darkness. Save me, she says from time to time. Come and get me. A little girl alone, in a car already riddled with bullets, with the bodies of four other people inside. The Israeli army sees her. They know very well she is there, and that she is still alive. They could save her themselves. Instead, they wait. They wait for the right moment to kill her.

And that moment arrives, late in the evening, just when the long chain of coordination seems to have closed, and finally, it has arrived – from Israel itself – the green light. The passage channel is guaranteed, one can set off to go and retrieve it.

A mere few metres from Hind Rajab's car, the army struck the ambulance and then the car again. Hind, Zaïno and Mahdoun died. The child had already been sacrificed. But the right moment to carry out her death sentence would have been when they tried to rescue her. Only twelve days after the attack, once the Israeli army had withdrawn from the Tel al-Hawa area, Hind's mother, who was not with her in the car, would receive her daughter's remains, and the entire world would be able to see what had been done to the car: 355 rounds. Completely riddled, as were the bodies of those inside who were only trying to evacuate the area, obeying the orders of the Israeli army itself.

Alla fine del film ascoltiamo le parole della madre, vediamo le fotografie della bambina, quelle che già conosciamo tutti, perché fecero immediatamente il giro del mondo non appena la sua storia divenne nota. All’interno della Mezzaluna palestinese, quando si resero conto che i soccorsi di Hind Rajab venivano attivamente ostacolati, utilizzarono in tempo reale i Social media to let the world know what was happening. This is the only means the Palestinians have of getting the world to share what they are going through. It is a deeply ambivalent means: it reveals the truth in its brutality, but it does not equip us with the tools to change reality.

The director herself described this ambivalence, with sadness, during the press conference, when she said that rather than a duty, making this film felt like the only thing to do out of an urgent need for justice, in a time and historical moment when, however, it is increasingly difficult to find meaning in what one is doing, because what one is doing will not stop the genocide. So all that remains is, at least, to communicate. Through art, to communicate the truth. And to humanise. To humanise a people constantly dehumanised, constantly deprived of their dignity and right to live. Starting with the children. “The mother recounted that Hind loved the sea. I thought about showing her humanity, beyond her death, through her images of joy, of play, with the sand, by the sea. Because when I think of Hind Rajab who loved the sea, then I think of the Gaza Riviera project, I ask myself what world we are living in.”.