Key points
- Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix back project
- Venice Festival faces Gaza war protests
- Mother hopes film sparks global action
- Israel yet to investigate Rajab’s death
ISLAMABAD: A new film about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces in Gaza last year is set to screen at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, after drawing backing from Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix.
According to AFP, the Gaza conflict has been a major talking point at the 2025 Italian cinema extravaganza, with thousands of protesters marching to the gates of the event, shouting: “Stop the genocide!”
The mother of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, has said she hoped that a film about her final moments to be screened at the ‘Venice Film Festival’ will help end Israel’s war.
🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/DDtVtM91yj pic.twitter.com/BPfFy1g6Qm
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 2, 2025
An open letter calling on festival organisers to denounce the Israeli government has gone unheeded, but has been signed by around 2,000 cinema insiders, according to the organisers.
The screening of “The Voice of Hind Rajab” on Wednesday will showcase one of the most hotly charged and political movies in the running for the top prize at the 11-day event.
Sole survivor
Directed by Franco-Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, it has attracted Pitt, Phoenix, and “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, who have lent their support as executive producers.
“At the heart of this film is something very simple, and very hard to live with. I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes,” Ben Hania told the festival before the premiere.
Gaza looms large at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, where Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab” is set to debut. The film recounts the final hours of six-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli fire in January 2024 pic.twitter.com/9c4q9B9P1K
— TRT World (@trtworld) August 28, 2025
Rajab was fleeing an Israeli offensive in Gaza City with her relatives in January 2024 when their car came under fire.
Left as the sole survivor in the badly damaged vehicle, her desperate pleas for help by phone – recorded by the Red Crescent rescue service and later released – caused brief international outrage.
Stopping the massacre
Rajab was later found dead along with two Red Crescent workers who went to retrieve her.
Ben Hania reproduces the phone recordings in the film but tells the story through the eyes and ears of fictional Red Crescent operatives, reports AP News.
“Sometimes, what you don’t see is more devastating than what you do,” Ben Hania said.
Hollywood luminaries Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuaron and Jonathan Glazer are among heavyweights to get behind Gaza drama ‘The Voice Of Hind Rajab’ ahead of its #VeniceFilmFestival world premiere.
‘The Voice Of Hind Rajab,’ which heralds from acclaimed… pic.twitter.com/p5NKXDs0tQ
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) August 27, 2025
Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera has promised it will be one of the films that will “have the biggest impact on audiences and critics”.
“I’m not sure how people are going to cope,” one insider who worked on the movie told the media on condition of anonymity.
Rajab’s mother said she hoped that the film would help end the nearly two-year-long war, which has cost the lives of at least 63,633 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza that the United Nations deems reliable.
“I hope this film will help stop this destructive war and save the other children of Gaza,” Wissam Hamada told the media by phone from devastated, famine-hit Gaza City, where she lives with her five-year-old son.
Invasion of Gaza
“The whole world has left us to die, to go hungry, to live in fear, and to be forcibly displaced without doing anything. It’s a huge betrayal,” she added.
The Israeli military said the circumstances of Rajab’s death were “still being reviewed”, without giving further details.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian activists turned the 82nd Venice Film Festival into a platform for Gaza, piercing the glamour of cinema’s biggest stage to highlight the humanitarian catastrophe.
The protest was led by Venice4Palestine, a network of Italian and international film… pic.twitter.com/6VnG39y04B
— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) September 1, 2025
It has never announced a formal investigation into the case.
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 Hamas, which left 1,219 people dead, most of them civilians.
Glazer’s decision to denounce what he called Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as he accepted his Oscar for best director for Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” in 2024 split the Jewish filmmaking world.
Signing open letter
Around 370 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, including Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche.
🪧 ‘We are all an audience to genocide’
Eva H.D., the writer of Charlie Kaufman’s short film ‘How to Shoot a Ghost’, displayed a banner in solidarity with Gaza on the red carpet at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/yZIc04IIAq
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) September 1, 2025
Others have avoided taking a clear position.
This year’s Venice jury president, Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”, “Sideways”) said he was “unprepared” to answer a question about his views on the war last week, adding he was “here to judge and talk about cinema”.
“Please, come get me.”
These are the last words of 6-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was stuck in a car with the bodies of her slain family members before she, too, was killed by Israeli forces.
This is the harrowing experience Hind endured in her final moments,… pic.twitter.com/z89oQ8OmfW
— TRT World (@trtworld) October 12, 2024
Other movies premiering on Wednesday in Venice include star-packed “In the Hand of Dante” by Julian Schnabel, a gangster story set between New York and Italy about the theft of the original manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”.
It features Oscar Isaac in the lead role alongside Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese, and Al Pacino.
