Director of Oscar-Nominated Hind Rajab Film Rejects Israeli Investigation as "Smokescreen"
The director of the Oscar-nominated docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab has dismissed Israel's newly announced criminal investigation into the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, calling it "a smokescreen."
Kaouther Ben Hania, whose film won the grand jury prize at Venice and received nominations from both the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards, said what is needed is "justice delivered by an independent authority for Hind Rajab and all victims of the genocide in Gaza," not a public relations operation, according to Variety.
The Israeli military announced its first criminal investigations into Gaza killings on 19 August 2026, more than two years after the events in question, as reported by NPR and CNN. The investigations cover the death of Hind Rajab and the killings of 15 Palestinian aid workers in Gaza. The IDF published an official English-language page on its website detailing the decisions, describing an incident involving fire toward a vehicle of the Hamada family and an ambulance that resulted in the deaths of nine people, including the child Hind Rajab, according to the IDF's Military Advocate General's Corps. That incident was among five examined by the IDF's General Staff Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism.
The military police criminal investigation division will lead the probe, citing alleged failures in the coordination of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance movement, the IDF stated.
Hind Rajab was five years old on 29 January 2024, when volunteers at the Palestine Red Crescent received a call from a girl trapped in a car in Gaza. She had been travelling with six members of her family. The Israeli military has since admitted that its troops opened fire on the vehicle. Hind survived the initial shooting and spent three hours on the phone with the Palestinian Red Cross, pleading for help. An ambulance sent to rescue her was attacked by the Israeli military, killing two medics. The Israeli Defense Forces had repeatedly claimed that their troops were not in the area at the time of the killings, as reported by Variety.
Ben Hania obtained permission from Hind Rajab's mother and secured the rights to 70 minutes of audio recordings from that day, which form the backbone of her film, as she told Filmmaker Magazine in December 2025. The recording of Hind's call to the Red Cross runs through the documentary. Ben Hania told Screen Daily that the killing of Hind Rajab "is happening every day" and is not in the past, which is why she chose to make the film in the present tense.
The IDF maintains that its evacuation warnings to Gaza civilians were delivered through thousands of aerially distributed pamphlets, direct phone calls, and text messages from Israel Security Agency personnel, urging residents to move south of Wadi Gaza, according to its official website.
For Ben Hania, the investigation announced more than 30 months after the killing falls short of accountability. Her film, built from a child's voice on a phone line, has already carried the story to audiences at Venice, Sundance, and the Academy Awards. The inquiry now sits with the military's own police division — the same institution whose troops, by its own admission, fired on the car and the ambulance.
