In the shattering ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab,’ the story of a 6-year-old killed in Gaza

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In the shattering ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab,’ the story of a 6-year-old killed in Gaza

2025-09-04 00:07 Last Updated At：00:10

VENICE, Italy (AP) — In January 2024, a 6-year-old girl trapped inside a bullet-riddled car in Gaza City begged for someone to rescue her. Contact was lost with the first ambulance. Hind Rajab, five family members and two medics were found dead 12 days later.

The impact of the story, and the audio of Hind’s voice from that call, has been vast, inspiring songs, protest movements and now a film from Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania.

“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which debuted Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival, is a shattering document of the Israel-Hamas war, set entirely inside the dispatch center of the Palestine Red Crescent Society rescue service. The film uses the real audio of Hind's call, while actors portray the first responders.

“When you hear her voice you feel powerless,” Ben Hania told The Associated Press recently.

Hind’s cousin, Layan, who was in the car, had told family members that Israeli forces were firing on them before she was killed. The Red Crescent said Israeli troops fired on its ambulance. Asked for comment, the military said the incident is “still being reviewed,” without elaborating.

Listening to the audio, which was shared widely on social media in the 12 days after the Red Crescent lost contact with its medics and Hind, Ben Hania said she felt like she needed to do something, to help the innocent voice she was hearing.

“I felt like she was asking me to rescue her,” Ben Hania said. “It’s not rational what I’m saying, because I knew the tragedy already happened. I asked of myself, ‘What I can do,’ and I only know one thing: how to tell stories.”

Her resolve intensified after she heard the full recordings of the calls that day. The urgent imperative to make the film meant that she would have to put another project, which she was preparing to shoot, on hold, and work more quickly than she ever had before.

“There was kind of an emergency that I was feeling and I contaminated everybody,” she said.

Her first step was to talk to Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamadah, who gave her blessing and told her all about her daughter, from her love of the sea to her dreams of being a dentist. Then Ben Hania went about gathering her cast, including Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Clara Khoury and Amer Hlehel. It was important to her that her actors were Palestinian.

In some ways, everything was there for her to draw on with the real transcripts. She just needed to find a cinematic way to do it, and the language of movies was available to her. Here was, in essence, a rescue mission, full of urgency, high emotions and frustrating bureaucratic red tape, that plays out like a Hollywood thriller, without a happy Hollywood ending.

“What is happening in this story and in Gaza in general, is something that is beyond fiction,” Ben Hania said. “I didn’t have to invent anything, which is crazy. The story, the recording, starts with her cousin dying. And now there is another child who we must rescue.”

One thing she didn't want to show was a little girl trapped in a shot-out car full of dead bodies. Ben Hania's camera stays purposefully put inside the Red Crescent.

“For me, it wasn’t very interesting to show the images of the horror because we see them all over the internet. It doesn’t mean that they have no impact, but it’s like the world became insensitive,” Ben Hania said. “The choice to tell the story from this perspective for me was the best way. I felt like I was given something sacred, the voice of this little girl.”

The making of the film was emotional for everyone. It wasn’t uncommon for the crew members to be in tears. Then there were the actors, who were responding to Hind’s real voice, reciting nearly verbatim what their real-life counterparts said.

“They are great actors but there was a genuine reaction from them to hear this voice,” she said. “It was beyond acting.”

“The Voice of Hind Rajab” was expected to be one of the most affecting films of the festival and awards season. After the film was completed and selected for Venice, Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonathan Glazer all joined as executive producers. Tunisia has also decided “The Voice of Hind Rajab” will be its candidate for best international feature at the Oscars. Ben Hania has two Oscar nominations to her name already, for best documentary (“Four Daughters”) and best international feature (“The Man Who Sold His Skin”).

The conflict in Gaza has loomed over the festival from its start, with calls to disinvite actors for their views, questions to filmmakers and actors about an indie film company’s funding ties to the Israeli military, and a large-scale protest that drew thousands this weekend.

The Health Ministry says over 63,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22-month war, which began when Hamas-led militants abducted 251 hostages and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals, but 48 remain in Gaza, with around 20 believed to be alive.

Ben Hania said the Hind Rajab Foundation, a legal group based in Belgium, was not involved.

“The Voice of Hind Rajab” does not yet have theatrical distribution in North America, but Ben Hania hopes that it will be seen “all over the world.”

“I don’t want to tell the audience what to take away from the film,” she said. “I just want them to see it.”

For more coverage of the 2025 Venice Film Festival, visit https://apnews.com/hub/venice-film-festival.

US stocks climb again after Trump calls off his tariffs for Greenland

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is ticking higher Thursday and regaining more of its losses for the week following the latest walkback by President Donald Trump from tariffs he had earlier threatened.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% and added to its big gain from Wednesday, when Trump said he had reached “the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” and called off 10% tariffs on European countries that he said opposed his having the Arctic island. The index has recovered most of its losses taken after Trump shook financial markets with his initial tariff threat.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 260 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.

It’s the latest example of Trump making a big, initial threat, only to pull back after seeing how much pain it caused in financial markets. The pattern has led to the “TACO” acronym, suggesting that “Trump Always Chickens Out” if markets react strongly enough. Tuesday’s drop for the U.S. stock market was the worst since October and large enough that Trump, who often takes credit when Wall Street is doing well, acknowledged “the dip.”

But the pattern has also led to deals for Trump that outsiders may have initially considered unlikely if not for his extreme initial threat.

Details are still sparse about the framework of a deal on Greenland that Trump said he reached with the head of NATO. And it is not a signed deal yet.

Financial markets nevertheless showed some signs of steadiness, though nerves were still apparent. Gold’s price seemed to pause its ascent into records as investors may have felt less urgency to own something seen as safe. The value of the U.S. dollar rose against some foreign currencies, though it fell against the euro, after sliding sharply earlier in the week when global investors bailed out of several U.S. markets.

Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market following some encouraging reports on the U.S. economy’s strength. One said that fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected in a potential signal that the pace of layoffs remains low. A second suggested the U.S. economy grew at a faster rate during the summer than the government initially estimated.

A third said that inflation in November was close to economists' expectations, while spending by U.S. consumers was a touch better than expected.

They helped the yield on the 10-year Treasury remain at 4.26%, where it was late Wednesday.

On Wall Street, Northern Trust climbed 5.8% after reporting a stronger profit for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. CEO Michael O’Grady also said that the financial services company is entering 2026 with “strong momentum across all our businesses.”

Procter & Gamble added 2.1% after delivering a better profit than analysts expected. Revenue for the company behind the Downy, Pantene and Tide brands, though, fell just shy of expectations amid what CEO Shailesh Jejurikar called a “challenging consumer and geopolitical environment.”

Another winner was Generac, which makes power generators. It rose 4.1% as forecasters warn a potentially catastrophic ice storm may hit a large swath of the United States.

They helped offset a 6.3% drop for spice seller McCormick & Co., whose profit fell short of expectations. CEO Brendan Foley said it continues to face rising costs because of “a shifting global trade environment.”

Shares of BitGo, a company that helps everyone from crypto businesses to traditional financial firms hold and manage digital assets, are set to begin trading later in the day on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time. The company priced its stock at $18 per share in its initial public offering, above its earlier estimated range of $15 to $17.

In stock markets abroad, indexes climbed across Europe and Asia amid relief on Trump’s walkback of tariffs.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.7%, and France’s CAC 40 climbed 1.1% for two of the world’s bigger gains.

Global markets also got support from a continuing easing of long-term yields in Japan’s bond market. They had spiked early in the week on worries that Japan’s popular prime minister could make moves that would add heavily to the government’s already big debt.

But the 40-year Japanese government bond yield has eased since hitting a record and dropped back below 4% on Thursday after hitting 4.22% on Tuesday.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.