Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and directors Alfonso Cuarón and Jonathan Glazer have joined as executive producers of the film The Voice of Hind Rajab, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Pitt’s production company, Plan B, is listed as an official producer.
The film, originally a Tunisian production, comes from Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, a two-time Academy Award nominee for best documentary. It tells the story of the death of a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, in January 2024.
Rajab was the sole survivor after Israeli forces opened fire on her family’s car in Gaza City as they attempted to evacuate. She remained on the phone for more than three hours with a representative of the Palestinian Red Crescent. Twelve days after the line went silent, Rajab was found dead along with two paramedics who had tried to rescue her.
Her death quickly became a rallying point for human rights organizations and anti-Israel activists worldwide. In April 2024, pro-Palestinian groups at Columbia University occupied a campus building and renamed it “Hind Hall.” Students at the University of California, Berkeley, soon followed with a similar move. In Belgium, the “Hind Rajab Foundation” was established to pursue legal action against Israeli soldiers for alleged war crimes during the war in Gaza.
Ben Hania’s film, which includes excerpts from Rajab’s recorded call with the Red Crescent, is expected to screen at additional high-profile festivals, including Toronto, London and San Sebastiánn, before heading into the awards season, where many predict it will secure an Oscar nomination and potentially a win.
“At the heart of this film is something very simple that is very hard to live with,” Ben Hania told Deadline. “I cannot accept a world where a child cries for help and no one comes. This pain, this failure, belongs to all of us. This is not only a story about Gaza. It is a story that speaks to universal grief.”