A powerful docudrama chronicling the final moments of a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed during Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza has won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” directed by acclaimed French-Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, received the festival’s second-highest honor on Saturday, following Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother,” which took the top prize.
The film centers on the true story of Hind Rajab, a young Palestinian girl who died in early 2024 after Israeli forces opened fire on her family’s vehicle as they attempted to flee Gaza City. The vehicle was left riddled with bullets, killing Hind’s aunt, uncle, and three cousins.
Hind survived the initial attack and managed to call the Palestine Red Crescent Society, pleading for help in a harrowing phone call that lasted hours. The film incorporates audio from that real call, during which rescue workers tried to comfort the terrified child. Hind was ultimately killed before rescuers could reach her. Two medics dispatched to save her also lost their lives in the same attack.
Accepting the award, Ben Hania said: “Cinema cannot bring Hind back, nor can it erase the atrocity committed against her. Nothing can ever restore what was taken, but cinema can preserve her voice, make it resonate across borders. Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real, until justice is served.”
Ben Hania described the film as not only a tribute to Hind, but a reflection of the suffering of “an entire people enduring genocide.”
The film premiered three days earlier to overwhelming emotional response, earning a record-breaking 23-minute standing ovation. The screening ended with chants of “Free Palestine” and an eruption of Palestinian flags across the auditorium.
Speaking from Gaza City, Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, expressed hope that the film would compel the international community to act.
“The whole world has left us to die, to go hungry, to live in fear and to be forcibly displaced without doing anything,” she told AFP.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” continues to draw global attention to the human cost of the war in Gaza and is being praised for using cinema as a tool for remembrance, resistance, and calls for justice.
