The Voice of Hind Rajab gets record 23-minute ovation at Venice premiere

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The docu-drama, which recounts the last plea of a six-year-old Gaza girl, receives the longest lasting ovation successful the festival’s history.

Published On 3 Sep 2025

With tears and chants of “Free, Free Palestine” and the waving of Palestinian flags, the true-life drama, The Voice of Hind Rajab, recounting the last plea of a six-year-old Gaza miss who was brutally killed by the Israeli forces successful Gaza City past year, received a much than 23-minute lasting ovation astatine its premiere astatine the iconic Venice Film Festival.

At Wednesday’s premiere, the affectional docu-drama focuses connected recordings from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which tried for hours to reassure six-year-old Rajab arsenic she laic trapped successful a car wherever her aunt, uncle and 3 cousins were killed by Israeli fire.

In archetypal recordings taken from the onslaught connected January 29, 2024, Rajab is heard sobbing and telling the Red Crescent Society, “Please travel to me, delight come. I’m scared”, portion bullets were fired successful the background.

After a three-hour wait, rescuers were allowed, by the Israeli military, to dispatch an ambulance to the car wherever Rajab spoke from. However, interaction with the miss was chopped disconnected conscionable aft the ambulance arrived.

Days later, Rajab’s assemblage was recovered on with her relatives. The remains of the 2 killed ambulance workers who tried to rescue her were besides recovered from their vehicle, which had been destroyed.

Director of the docu-drama, Franco-Tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania, told reporters successful beforehand of the screening that the communicative from the media of those dying successful Gaza was that of “collateral damage”.

“And I deliberation this is truthful dehumanising, and that’s wherefore cinema, creation and each benignant of look is precise important to springiness those radical a dependable and face,” Ben Hania said.

Rajab’s mother, Wissam Hamada, told the AFP quality bureau that she hoped the movie would assistance extremity the war.

“The full satellite has near america to die, to spell hungry, to unrecorded successful fearfulness and to beryllium forcibly displaced without doing anything,” Hamada told AFP by telephone from Gaza City, wherever she lives with her five-year-old son.

“#TheVoiceOfHindRajab formed clasp up a representation of Hind Rajab during their record-breaking 23-minute-plus ovation this evening astatine the #VeniceFilmFestival.
Rajab was killed by Israeli forces successful Gaza past year. The movie chronicles the 6-year-old's last hours.”

via deadline pic.twitter.com/CkbumvkCn7

— May ❤️‍🔥💊🪞 (@mayswiftiee) September 3, 2025

In June 2024, Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines investigated the attack, providing a elaborate reconstruction of the incident, successful collaboration with nonprofit investigative groups Forensic Architecture and Earshot and revealed that an Israeli vessel was conscionable 13 to 23 metres (42 to 75 feet) distant erstwhile it opened occurrence connected Rajab’s car.

Moreover, a United Nations study successful July 2024 found, citing forensic analysis, that Rajab’s car was changeable astatine from “very adjacent scope utilizing a benignant of limb that tin lone beryllium attributed to the Israeli forces”.

While the Israeli subject has antecedently said its troops were not successful firing scope of the car Rajab was in, earlier this week, the subject was asked again astir the onslaught and said that the incidental was inactive nether review, declining to remark further.