{"id":5922,"date":"2025-09-06T12:07:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T12:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/5922\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T12:07:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T12:07:06","slug":"the-voice-of-hind-rajab-is-being-targeted-by-a-hate-campaign-says-director-kaouther-ben-hania-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/5922\/","title":{"rendered":"The Voice of Hind Rajab is being targeted by a hate campaign, says director Kaouther Ben Hania – Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

At its Venice Film Festival premiere, a powerful new Gaza film sparked 23 minutes<\/a> of sustained applause. But the next day, hate emails flooded in, the director said Friday. The Voice of Hind Rajab from French-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania is a strong contender for the festival\u2019s Golden Lion to be awarded today (Saturday).<\/p>\n

It has already garnered the support of famous Hollywood names attached as executive producers. Between Wednesday night, after the film\u2019s premiere, and Thursday, \u201cmy producers, including the well-known American names<\/a> Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix, had their mailboxes flooded with thousands and thousands [of intimidating messages]\u201d, Ben Hania told AFP. The same message, sent over and over, was \u201csuper intimidating,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The film covers the last minutes of the life of a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed<\/a> by Israeli fire last year while trying to escape Gaza with her family. It uses real-life recordings of the desperate telephone calls she made to the Red Crescent rescue service. Ben Hania procured the audio from the Red Crescent \u2014 with the permission of Hind\u2019s mother \u2014 but employed actors to portray the emergency workers who struggled to coordinate her rescue as Israeli tanks got ever closer.<\/p>\n

The director has said the dramatisation is \u201cvery close to what they experienced\u201d. Ben Hania told AFP that, after hearing about Hind\u2019s death in January 2024, she felt \u201ca lot of anger, a lot of despair, but also a sense of \u2018What can I do?\u2019\u201d Cast members told a press conference they felt it was their \u201cduty\u201d to make the film.<\/p>\n

Regardless, \u201cI didn\u2019t make this film to keep people comfortable in their seats,\u201d Ben Hania told AFP.<\/p>\n

The Voice of Hind Rajab received strong reviews, with critics citing its emotionally devastating audio recordings, although some pointed to a moral grey area in their use.<\/p>\n

The movie, which will be released in Tunisia later this month, does not yet have a US distributor. Tunisia has already chosen the film as its entry for the 2026 Academy Awards. Next up for the film is the Toronto International Film Festival<\/a>, then festivals in London, San Sebastian and Busan.<\/p>\n

The Venice premiere, the festival circuit, and a potential run for the Oscars, is \u201cvery important\u201d, Ben Hania said. \u201cFor a film like this, it allows enormous visibility and I want the film to be seen a little bit everywhere in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At its Venice Film Festival premiere, a powerful new Gaza film sparked 23 minutes of sustained applause. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-5922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}