The Voice of Hind Rajab
You don’t really watch this so much as sit there with your stomach clenched. Kaouther Ben Hania builds The Voice of Hind Rajab around the real emergency calls of a five-year-old girl trapped in a car in Gaza, pinning us in a single, airless dispatch centre as Red Crescent staff try to keep her talking and get help to her. When her small voice calmly repeats her name and location, it’s awful in the plainest sense.
As filmmaking, it’s impressively tight. The real-time structure mostly holds, the performances feel genuinely frayed, and the sound design does much of the work: phones crackling, drones overhead, distant shelling you can’t see but can’t tune out either.
What lingers, though, is unease. Turning a child’s final calls into a high-end pressure-cooker thriller is powerful, but also queasy. I’m not sure it quite earns the right to be this suspenseful, even if it makes sure Hind is impossible to forget.
As filmmaking, it’s impressively tight. The real-time structure mostly holds, the performances feel genuinely frayed, and the sound design does much of the work: phones crackling, drones overhead, distant shelling you can’t see but can’t tune out either.
What lingers, though, is unease. Turning a child’s final calls into a high-end pressure-cooker thriller is powerful, but also queasy. I’m not sure it quite earns the right to be this suspenseful, even if it makes sure Hind is impossible to forget.
Mini Review: You don’t really watch The Voice of Hind Rajab so much as brace yourself. Built around the real emergency calls of a five-year-old trapped in a car in Gaza, it pins you in a claustrophobic dispatch centre as responders try to reach her. The real-time tension and sound design are superb, but turning a child’s final pleas into a pressure-cooker thriller leaves a queasy aftertaste.
More Reviews of The Voice of Hind Rajab
djxcqtion
The Voice of Hind Rajab is one of those films that feels almost impossible to review in ordinary cinematic terms. Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama is not merely “hard to watch” — ...
glumpy_99
The negative score is partly for the film-making, which might be one of the more flat and dramatically inert “voice on the phone” dramas that have emerged in recent years, thoug...
moraesfelipe
Not unlike many tasteless, disjointed and aimless recent titles -- now I can only remember Son of Saul and Capernaum, but there's plenty of these coming out of film festivals ev...
driscarpin
A voz de Hind Rajab estreava há 3 meses no Festival de Mar del Plata.
Como cinema ele tem muitas semelhanças com o primeiro longa do Sydney Pollack, Uma vida em suspense, ...
Como cinema ele tem muitas semelhanças com o primeiro longa do Sydney Pollack, Uma vida em suspense, ...
Dr.Necrow
Finally got to watch this because it was in the Top 250. I fear it might be as over-hyped as it was depressing.
I don't really know what to say about this because the...
I don't really know what to say about this because the...
See all 6 reviews of The Voice of Hind Rajab
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