“The Voice of Hind Rajab”, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, will open the first edition of the Gaza International Women’s Film Festival, which will be held from October 26 to 31 among the rubble in the heart of the Gaza Strip.
The opening screening of “The Voice of Hind Rajab” in Deir El-Balah – a Palestinian city approximately nine miles from Gaza City that has been the scene of major military operations and humanitarian crises – will mark the film’s Middle East premiere. The moving drama, which recently won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, tells the true story of a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was stranded in a car that was attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead.
“I am truly moved that my film ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ has been chosen to open the first edition of the Gaza International Women’s Film Festival,” Ben Hania said in a statement on social media. “By organizing this festival in a city still marked by devastation, the organizers affirm that cinema can be a form of survival, a way to document pain and a means to recover the narrative.”
The Gaza International Women’s Film Festival was first announced during the Venice Film Festival by Italian and Palestinian organizers, who at the time planned to hold it online. The festival program will include approximately 80 films, including documentaries, short films and feature-length fiction films from 28 countries, all of which speak to the lives, voices and struggles of women, according to a statement.
The honorary president is the German filmmaker Monica Maurer, known as a director and producer of works about the difficult Palestinian situation, such as the documentary “Gaza Hospital.” There are two juries: one for fiction films and another for documentaries. The fiction jury is chaired by the French screenwriter and director Céline Sciamma, who is accompanied by the Moroccan director Mohamed El Younsi, the Italian actress Jasmine Trinca, the Palestinian screenwriter and director Fajr Yacoub and the Algerian actress and theater director Moni Boualam.
Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir – whose “Palestine 36” reconstructs the revolt against British colonial rule in 1936 and has been chosen as Palestine’s official candidate for the Oscars’ international feature film race – chairs the documentary jury alongside Bahraini producer Bassim Al Thawadi, Italian producer Graziella Bildesheim, the director Kuwaiti Abdulaziz Al-Sayegh and the Cuban editor Maricet Sancristobal.
The Gaza International Women’s Film Festival is founded by Palestinian filmmaker and cultural events organizer Ezzaldeen Shalh, president of the International Union of Arab Film Festivals.
