KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 17 — The Voice of Hind Rajab premiered in Malaysian cinemas last week, telling the tragic story of a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza and highlighting the plight of Palestinian children affected by the ongoing conflict.
To veteran journalist Zainal Rashid Ahmad, it was the first docu-drama about Palestine that brought home a glimpse of the horrors of their struggle to cinema goers.
“I grew up with cinemas – this was the place where I saw big films from Hong Kong, from Bollywood but I have never learnt about Palestine in cinemas,” he said during a ‘coffee talk’ session of the film here recently.
“Alhamdulillah, at the age of 59-year-old, I would like to thank Primeworks Studios and Media Prima for bringing this story for the first time.
“Throughout my life growing up following the issues in Palestine, I believe this is the first time their story is being shown in cinemas,” he added.
Directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, The Voice of Hind Rajab reconstructs Hind’s final hours on January 29, 2024, using real 70-minute audio recordings of her desperate calls to Palestine Red Crescent dispatchers, alongside reenactments of rescue workers racing against time to save her.
Actors Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel and Clara Khoury portray the dispatchers and rescue workers in the re-enacted scenes.
The docu-drama not only tells Hind’s story but also honours tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed since the October 7, 2023, conflict, highlighting the broader humanitarian crisis while encouraging Malaysians to support the film in cinemas.
Media Prima will donate RM1 from every ticket sold to the Palestine Humanitarian Fund as a gesture of solidarity.
This is in hopes of paving the way for broader opportunities for the film to gain international recognition, not only at the upcoming Academy Awards but also for it to be distributed more widely in cinemas around the globe.
Zainal also took the opportunity during the ‘coffee talk’ to pay tribute to other Palestinian children whose lives have been cut short by the conflict.
The child martyrs
Lamis Najim was the 17-year-old niece of influential Palestinian activist and novelist Ghassan Kanafani, who was assassinated by Israel’s Mossad in 1972 in a car bomb. Lamis, who was with him at the time, was also killed in the blast.
Muhammad Al-Durrah was 12 years old when he was killed in September 2000 after a bullet passed through his father, Jamal Al-Durrah, and fatally struck him.
The incident, which was filmed by a French television crew, showed Jamal and Muhammad taking cover from gunfire behind a rubbish bin, and the footage made global headlines and became one of the enduring symbols of the Palestinian struggle.
Zainal shared that he was the news editor for NTV7 at the time, and said it was one of the hardest news clips he had to edit due to its distressing content, especially as he could hear Jamal’s voice repeatedly pleading from behind the rubbish bin that they were unarmed.
Fourteen-year-old Faris Odeh was another Palestinian youth killed in 2000, the year of the second intifada, and became a national icon after a photograph showed him throwing stones at an Israeli tank.
Faris was shot in the neck by Israeli forces near the Karni crossing in the Gaza Strip, just 10 days after the photograph was taken, on October 29, 2000.
Reem Nabhan was a three-year-old girl killed on November 22, 2023, during an Israeli airstrike on her family’s home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
Her five-year-old brother, Tariq Nabhan, was also killed in the airstrike.
Her story became widely known through a circulating video of her grandfather, Khaled Nabhan, holding Reem’s lifeless body, reflecting their close bond.
Following her death, Khaled became a humanitarian icon in Gaza and spent the following year volunteering at hospitals, distributing food and toys to children and feeding stray cats, before he himself was killed in another Israeli airstrike on December 16, 2024.
Reem and Tariq’s deaths took place just two months before Hind’s death.
A lesson in humanity
While discussing the film, Zainal noted that the tragedy of Hind Rajab was recorded on film, unlike many other stories from the past 52 years that never reached cinemas.
Zainal, who is also a volunteer with the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla, urged Malaysians to support the film in cinemas, citing it as a powerful lesson in humanitarian awareness.
