The Voice of Hind Rajab
WILLA | Release Date: December 17, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyDec 23, 2025
Yes, The Voice of Hind Rajab is both emotionally distressing and ethically uncomfortable, brutally so, as it was intended to be. But for all the reviewers’ gut-wrenching adjectives, the critics were physically safe from harm. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMarya E. GatesDec 17, 2025
The structure dispels the idea that there is a “right way” to navigate the Kafkaesque complexities of an oppressive regime, as is made plain by the ultimate fate of Hind and the two ambulance first responders, Youssef Zeino and Ahmed Madhoun. Read full review
100
Time OutWhelan BarzeyDec 15, 2025
As in her Oscar-nominated documentary The Four Daughters, Ben Hania refuses to let the audience look away. Read full review
100
Screen RantGregory NussenOct 31, 2025
Director Kaouther Ben Hania's The Voice of Hind Rajab is a shattering docu-film which utilizes a novel mix of real audio and footage with actors' reconstruction in a Herculean effort to make this profound loss even more immediate. Hers is a utilitarian mission: to embed the audience in the sensory experience of being in a war zone without letting them scroll past or swipe to the next video. Read full review
100
BBCNicholas BarberSep 7, 2025
No other film this year will get more people talking, or more people crying. Read full review
100
The TimesKevin MaherSep 4, 2025
It is deliberately punishing material, channelled through unapologetic, galvanising film-making. Politicians should see it. Decision-makers should see it. Read full review
91
The PlaylistMarshall ShafferSep 4, 2025
Take out a thesaurus for any overused critical buzzword about political cinema – timely, urgent, necessary – and they all fail to capture the shattering impact of Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab. Read full review
91
IndieWireSophie Monks KaufmanSep 4, 2025
The Voice of Hind Rajab is an invitation to a public mourning. Read full review
90
Little White LiesLeila LatifJan 16, 2026
Even setting aside its subject matter, it is an astounding feat of dramatising real events with an eye on the cinematic, yet it delivers such a punch to the heart that one hesitates to recommend it without qualification. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 4, 2025
Aware of the raw, incendiary power of her subject matter, Ben Hania doesn’t sensationalize this story, keeping the action fixed entirely in the call center itself, with actors portraying the dispatchers on the line. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenSep 4, 2025
Ben Hania lights a connective fuse between documentary and drama. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerJan 15, 2026
The Voice of Hind Rajab is not just a reminder of the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza. It’s a reminder that the constant smears against human rights organizations and aid agencies are vile slanders by people who want this to happen again and again and again. Read full review
85
TheWrapBen CrollSep 4, 2025
Ben Hania shows little interest in agitprop. By burrowing into the granular details of this one tragedy on this one day, she arrives at an extraordinarily far-reaching articulation of an acutely contemporary emotion. Read full review
80
EmpireJohn NugentJan 16, 2026
About as powerful as cinema gets. Its hybrid blend of documentary audio and devastating dramatisation is heart-wrenchingly, shatteringly effective. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJan 16, 2026
The film’s aim, to my eyes, is not to revel in, score points with or otherwise sensationalise the killing of a five-year-old girl. Rather, it confronts us with the dilemma the taped call itself poses: what are we, as humans, meant to do with it? More to the point, what can we? Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyJan 15, 2026
[Hania] carefully sidesteps ethical questions about the use of performance alongside archival evidence with a clear-headed chronicle of a tragedy and of wider Palestinian suffering. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleDec 18, 2025
The movie is a powerfully blunt instrument of empathy. Ben Hania’s insistence on close-up melodramatics — faces in anguish, a handheld camera glued to them — sometimes overshadows a thirst for something more analytical. But it’s decidedly a vision, one steeped in roiling pain. Read full review
80
ColliderEmma KielyOct 9, 2025
It's a maddening and heart-pounding portrait of bureaucracy amid war and the mental torture of being helpless in the face of terror. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 4, 2025
The boundaries between fiction and reality are permeable throughout, with some shots juxtaposing actors against phone camera footage of the real life characters that they portray. For the most part, it works very effectively, although the snippets of real life phone footage are a little distracting, jolting us out of the nervy chokehold of the story. Read full review
80
Next Best PictureJosh ParhamSep 4, 2025
A harrowing portrait of an attempted rescue that is captivating and intense. It’s emotionally effective, incredibly moving and haunting as it captures these events with an impactful intimacy. The performances across the board are exceptional. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 4, 2025
There is a reckless, ruthless kind of provocative brilliance in what Ben Hania is doing. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael Andor BrodeurJan 8, 2026
The film tells a multidimensional story of loss, where memory is both honored and exposed as futile. Read full review
75
Paste MagazineNadira BegumOct 27, 2025
There’s no doubt that The Voice of Hind Rajab is a devastating and groundbreaking piece of cinema that achieves its goal of raising awareness about the plight of Palestinian children living under siege. But after years of documentaries that have captured the brutality of life under occupation without the farce of drama, and in the face of relentless bombardment from an Israeli state that refuses to abide by the terms of a ceasefire, raising awareness just doesn’t feel like enough. Read full review
70
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergDec 17, 2025
As wrenching as The Voice of Hind Rajab is, there is something uneasy-making about turning a child’s harrowing cries for help into a pretext for metacinematic flourishes. Hind’s story does not need that kind of intellectualized gimmickry, in which recordings of authentic terror serve as proof of the staging’s verisimilitude. Read full review
70
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 4, 2025
If The Voice of Hind Rajab opens one hitherto blinkered eye, or ear, to the atrocities in Gaza, it will have done its job. But it’s a blunt and discomfiting instrument. Read full review
50
The New YorkerJustin ChangJan 16, 2026
The workplace dramas intended to animate Hind’s story wind up distracting from it. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineWes GreeneDec 15, 2025
Watching actors interact with an authentic recording of a child on the brink of death is less an invitation to audiences to wrestle with the horrors of war and more with the ethics of the film’s creative choices. Read full review
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