Can a film break India & Israel bond, asks The Voice of Hind Rajab director

The film has been submitted to CBFC’s revising committee. “There is no strict guideline regarding when the committee should respond. So, I am checking their website regularly for a possible update,” said Nandwana.

Responding to questions about certification, I&B Ministry’s spokesperson said they won’t comment at this stage when the film is with the revising committee. The Indian Express reached out to Prasoon Joshi, the CBFC chairperson, for his comment on this issue and is awaiting his response.

The much-acclaimed docudrama premiered in the main competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in September 2025 to a moving response, receiving nearly a 23-minute standing ovation. Following this, Nandwana secured the film’s distribution rights for India as well as other South Asian countries. He applied for its certification on January 26 and it was screened for the CBFC members on February 27. “Though the members did not suggest any cuts, they were reluctant to issue its certification,” he says.

Reacting to the certification hurdles, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor posted on X: “That’s pretty disgraceful. In a democracy, screening a film is a reflection of our society’s freedom of expression and has nothing to do with government to government relations. This practice of banning films or books because of the offence they might cause to foreign countries must stop immediately. It’s unworthy of a mature democracy.”

In The Voice of Hind Rajab, Ben Hania reconstructed the events of January 29, 2024, when Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers received an emergency call. Six-year-old girl Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleaded for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they did everything they could to get an ambulance to her. Recalling what prompted her to make the docudrama, the writer-director told The Indian Express in an unpublished interview: “The first thing I received was the voice of Hind Rajab. There was a recording shared on social media. I thought that this incident should be the tipping point of the genocide, and everything should stop after it. Like, I can’t comprehend why the world is not upside down, because of what happened to Hind Rajab, her family and two paramedics (they were killed while trying to rescue her). The world wasn’t upside down. So, I needed to do something, because not doing something for me was complicity.”

Ben Hania, who experienced a strong feeling of “indignation and helplessness”, contacted the Red Crescent to listen to the entire recording of their interaction with Hind Rajab. “The main idea was to find the perfect form to honour her voice, not to replace her voice with that of an actress even though I used actors to portray the Red Crescent staff. The main idea was to honour her voice and how to amplify it,” she said. Ben Hania’s documentary Four Daughters (2023), too, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

When asked about the criticism by a certain section regarding using Hind Rajab’s real voice, Bena Hania said, “It’s not comfortable for a section of the audience to hear the real voice because it reminds them that this is the reality. People go to the cinema to escape. They are angry at the movie because it’s reminding them that this is real. They should be angry against the Israeli army, against the occupation. In this case, cinema is not an escape. They want me to protect the audience, I want to protect the victims in Gaza.”

Nandwana had earlier tried to screen The Voice of Hind Rajab at several Indian festivals, including the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa and International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). However, the film could not be screened as it did not get clearance from the I&B Ministry. Only the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) 2025 screened the film as they did not seek the ministry’s approval.