Gaza – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

MOVIE OF THE WEEK December 19, 2025: THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB

December 14, 2025December 15, 2025 Jennifer Merin Amer Hlehel, betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, Gaza, Hind Rajab, israel, jennifer merin, Kaouther Ben Hania, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, Motaz Malhees, motw, Palestine, Red Crescent, Red Cross, Saja Kilani, sandie angulo chen, sherin nicole, The Voice of Hind Rajab

A mix of heartbreaking reality and dramatic reenactments, Kaouther Ben Hania’s intense The Voice of Hind Rajab humanizes — in a horribly tragic way — the impact of the deadly conflict between Israel and Palestine. It’s impossible not to be moved as the film tells the true story of a young girl trapped in a bullet-riddled vehicle while aid workers desperately try to overcome the odds to rescue her. This would be a harrowing story in any circumstances, but the fact that Ben Hania uses the actual recordings of Hind’s conversations with the Red Crescent staff members makes it nearly unbearably distressing. She is vulnerable, bewildered, frightened, demanding — in other words, she is a very real, very traumatized child, and your heart shatters for her, as well as for those who are trying so hard to help her.

Reviews

THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB – Review by Leslie Combemale

December 8, 2025December 13, 2025 Leslie Combemale Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury, Gaza, Hind Rajab, israel, Kaouther Ben Hania, Motaz Malhees, motw, Palestine, Red Crescent, Red Cross, Saja Kilani, The Voice of Hind Rajab

The Voice of Hind Rajab is a docudrama that dramatizes the true story of the Red Crescent (a humanitarian force that works to prevent and alleviate human suffering and is there in crisis situations, including wars) that on January 29th, 2024, tried to rescue a six year old Palestinian girl trapped in a car in Gaza. All members of her family that were in the car were killed when the Israeli Defense Forces opened fire, and she alone survived. She calls the emergency line, and Red Crescent volunteers keep her on the line while they try to get an ambulance to her, which is a complicated and dangerous proposition.

Festivals Reviews

HOLDING LIAT (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

June 11, 2025June 16, 2025 Valerie Kalfrin Aviv Atzili, Berlinale Documentary Award, Brandon Kramer, Chaya Beinin, documentary, Gaza, hamas, Holding Liat, hostages, humanitarian crisis, israel, Joe Biden, Liat Beinin Atzili, mubi, Netta Atzili, Tribeca 2025, Yehuda Beinin

Holding Liat focuses a compassionate and introspective lens on the ongoing conflict in Gaza through the conflicting feelings of one Israel-American family whose loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas. Roughly two weeks after the terrorist organization abducted civics teacher Liat Beinin Atzili and her artist husband, Aviv Atzili, during its incursion on Oct. 7, 2023, filmmakers related to her began documenting her family’s experience, the film notes. Although largely focusing on the Atzili family, the film illuminates the sympathetic and varied views of people caught in up in history as it unfolds.

Essays Guest Posts

A REAL PAIN, Holocaust Tourism & Gaza – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

March 26, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post A Real Pain, Gaza, guest post, Holocaust tour, jesse eisenberg, Jewish roots, Kieran Culkin, lithuania, Poland, the female gaze, vilna, vilnius, Yael Friedman

A Real Pain utilizes the familiar tourist trip as a convincing canvas. Nailing down the charmingly Bohemian Benji (Kieran Culkin) by booking a conventional tour by the more conventional cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg), made sense. It was a perfect vehicle for allowing their dynamics, personalities, the themes of memory and trauma tourism, to unfold. The exposition in this screenplay was a master class, even though the actors are laying versions of themselves, or because of it. It’s a neat sleight of hand to turn a character you think you know into one entirely invented. As fun as Benji was and as envious as the more straitlaced and neurotic David got, the tragedy of Benji’s character pierced deeply. He endeared and broke and enraged you in equal measure. We never really find out why Benji has been cast adrift in life, and we don’t need to. We meet him where he is and worry for what is next. Just enough is given to make it real and utterly palpable.

Interviews

Producer Rashid Masharawi on FROM GROUND ZERO – Jennifer Green interviews

December 12, 2024December 15, 2024 Jennifer Green anthology film, From Ground Zero, Gaza, International Oscar, Laura Nikolov, Palestinian films, ramallah, Rashid Masharawi

As a woman in one of the 22 short films in Palestine’s International Oscar entry, From Ground Zero, says, the loved ones lost in the ongoing war in Gaza are at risk of becoming “just numbers.” This film aims to resist that happening. But it also aims to go beyond stories of human suffering, according to producer Rashid Masharawi, who conceived of, organized and financed the anthology. On the one hand, he notes, the film intends to “document what’s going on.” On the other hand, he says, “I want this film to be shown internationally. It’s about life, it’s about love, it’s about hope. It’s about resistance. It’s not trying to show complaining all the time.”