San Francisco Frontiers - Gaza drama gets 23-minute ovation at Venice premiere

"The Voice of Hind Rajab", a docu-drama about real events from January 2024, left much of the audience and many journalists sobbing as it screened for the first time.

Franco-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania and her cast, all dressed in black, were also in tears as they soaked in applause, cheers and shouts of "Free Palestine! at the 1,032-seat main festival cinema.

"We see that the narrative all around world is that those dying in Gaza are collateral damage, in the media," Ben Hania told journalists ahead of the premiere.

"And I think this is so dehumanising, and that's why cinema, art and every kind of expression is very important to give those people a voice and face."

Her film tells the story of Hind Rajab Hamada who was fleeing the Israeli military in Gaza City with six relatives last year when their car came under fire.

The sole survivor, her desperate calls with the Red Crescent rescue service -- which were recorded and released -- brief caused international outrage.

"The Voice of Hind Rajab" has plenty of famous names attached as executive producers -- from actors Joaquin Phoenix, who attended the premiere, and Brad Pitt to Oscar-winning directors Jonathan Glazer ("The Zone of Interest") and Mexico's Alfonso Cuaron ("Roma").

"I'm very happy, and I never in my life thought that can be possible," Ben Hania said of her A-list backers.

Its premiere came on the same day as a senior Israeli military official said one million Palestinians could be displaced by a new offensive around Gaza City.

- True story -

"The Voice of Hind Rajab" makes chilling use of the real phone recordings of Hind Rajab, but tells the story through a dramatised Red Crescent team which is trying to coordinate her rescue.

"It is dramatisation, but very close to what they experienced," Ben Hania added.

Hind Rajab was eventually found dead along with two ambulance staff who went to rescue her.

"Please come to me, please come. I'm scared," she can be heard sobbing repeatedly in the film while bullets fly in the background.

She is described as six years old, but a death certificate viewed by AFP in Gaza showed her age as five.

Deadline magazine said the film "could be the lightning rod that supporters of the Gazan cause are waiting for", while Vogue tipped it for Venice's top prize on Saturday.

A critic in Variety magazine said the "shattering" audio footage "carries a brutal emotional wallop" but the mix of drama and documentary footage was "questionable."

- 'Stop the war' -

The Gaza conflict has been a major talking point at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, where thousands of protesters marched to the entrance of the event on Saturday.

An open letter calling on festival organisers to denounce the Israeli government has been signed by around 2,000 cinema insiders, according to the organisers.

Hind Rajab's mother, Wissam Hamada, said she hoped the film would help end the war.

"The whole world has left us to die, to go hungry, to live in fear and to be forcibly displaced without doing anything," Hamada told AFP by phone from Gaza City where she lives with her five-year-old son.

Israel's bombardment has killed at least 63,633 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations deems reliable.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said the circumstances of Hind Rajab's death were "still being reviewed", without giving further details.

It has never announced a formal investigation into the case.

- Tensions -

The war in Gaza has regularly caused tension in the cinema world since Israel launched its offensive in October 2023 in retaliation for an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas which left 1,219 people dead, most of them civilians.

Hundreds of actors and directors signed an open letter during the Cannes film festival in May saying they were "ashamed" of their industry's "passivity" about the war.

Cannes began under the shadow of the killing of Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, the subject of the documentary which was picked for a sidebar section of the festival.

A day after Hassouna was told the film had been selected, an Israeli air strike on her home in northern Gaza killed her and 10 relatives.

B.Johnson--SFF