I can’t pretend The Voice of Hind Rajab is easy viewing. It’s a daunting story of a five-year-old Palestinian girl trapped inside a car as Israeli forces close in while Red Crescent humanitarian aid workers rush to save her. Thus, I share the filmmakers’ biggest fear that audiences will be too intimidated to watch it. But trust me when I say that the film is masterful at walking the lines between honest and brutal, bleak and beautiful. At a brisk 89 minutes, the film knows how to create maximum impact without lingering a moment longer than necessary.

Furthermore, the balancing act is made all the more impressive by how it straddles the line between documentary and fiction. The Voice of Hind Rajab isn’t just a run-of-the-mill “based on a true story” dramatization. Director Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) obtained the actual tapes from Hind’s desperate calls for help. The titular voice is literally her own. Her real words. Her real cries.

The choice is powerful. Ben Hania ensures that confusing the words for fiction is impossible. She intercuts tense scenes in the Red Crescent offices with footage of soundwaves blipping across the screen as Hind speaks. The director marks these moments with the audio file title in the upper corner as a reminder of how real it all is.

Ben Hania’s mission is clear. She doesn’t just want to share the facts about Hind’s tragedy. She wants to move audiences by diving into the realities of providing aid in a war zone. The horror of the film doesn’t come from showing bloodshed. In fact, the film never shows a drop of blood on-screen. Instead, it comes from the intense human desire to help a child beating against a wall of bureaucracy, tricky international policy, and red tape.

Keeping the cast small ratchets the focus on a handful of responders dealing directly with the call itself. Motaz Malhees intense performance as Omar, the first to get Hind’s call for help, absolutely steals the show. His rage at a system that makes it so difficult to coordinate the rescue of an innocent reaches through the screen. It gets directly under your skin until you want to scream with him. His foil, of sorts, is level-headed coordinator Mahdi M. Aljamal (Amer Hlehel). He knows that doing anything other than going by the book risks even more lives. Hlehel plays Aljamal with subdued authority. You always understand his intent, even as he and Omar butt heads, preventing one from ever truly being an antagonist to the other.

Ben Hania plays with the tension between the men while the staff seems to hang by an emotional thread. The effect keeps the audience glued to the screen. Even knowing how the news story ends can’t keep you from hoping somehow it will be different this time.

It’s easy to see why, after the story broke in January 2024, Ben Hania dropped everything to bring it to the big screen. The Voice of Hind Rajab needs not just to be witnessed, but witnessed right now as the war in Palestine rages on, ceasefire or no.

The Voice of Hind Rajab opens in limited engagement on December 17.

Watch the trailer to The Voice Of Hind Rajab now: