Alan in Belfast: The Voice of Hind Rajab – an urgent reminder about a real-life tragedy that should not be forgotten (Queen’s Film Theatre until Wednesday 28 January)

Omar, a call handler at the Red Crescent office in the West Bank, receives an emergency request from a car in northern Gaza. There are few survivors in a car full of family who were fleeing their home in an area that Israeli forces had ordered to be evacuating. Ultimately a five-year-old girl is kept on the line while another Red Crescent official tries to negotiate a safe rescue mission. Tempers flare. Risks mount.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is Kaouther Ben Hania’s dramatisation of the real-life incident that weaves original audio from the recorded calls (with mother’s consent) – and later in the film, video captured in the Red Crescent office during a rescue attempt – to heighten the authenticity.

Motaz Malhees picks up the with empathy that Omar is consumed by as he tries to comfort and help the child in peril. Hind first suggests that the others in her car – her aunt, uncle and cousins – are “asleep” before admitting that she knows that they are dead. As day turns to evening, the girl tells the Red Crescent operators that “It will be dark soon, I’m scared”. Those are the child’s real words.

Over time, we realise that a cumbersome protocol’s ‘guarantee’ of safe passage – organised through the International Red Cross in Geneva talking to an Israeli Ministry who in turn make arrangements with the troops on the ground – has too frequently turned into a dangerous game of ‘Chinese whispers’ which has resulted in the deliberate or accidental death of rescuers.

Omar’s distress and frustration with the “coward hiding behind his desk” who can’t order an ambulance to make the eight-minute trip to the car is matched by the agonisingly slow manner of coordinator Mahdi (Amer Hlehel) who carries the guilt of previous failed missions.

The film never shies away from the reality questions of why the military would attack a civilian vehicle leaving an area as instructed. Why would anyone fire more than three hundred bullets into a car? Who would have the firepower to annihilate an ambulance? The ethics of the Red Crescent having to get Israeli permission and protection to rescue someone who had been attached by the Israeli military are also explored.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is one of a number of cinematic tributes to a five-year-old girl who is emblematic of so many other undocumented children and adult deaths in Gaza. It is not an easy film to watch. But in a month that features cinematic treats like Hamnet, Marty Surprise, Saipan and Sentimental Value, this is an urgent reminder about a real-life tragedy that should not be forgotten.

(Eighteen hours before watching a preview of this film, I’d watched on social media as friends of Renee Good reacted to her being fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis. Subsequent reporting suggests that bystanders were prevented from giving medical assistance to Renee. Senior political figures continue to deny and contradict what video evidence depicts. The Israel Defence Forces denied having troops within firing range of the car; satellite imagery, along with the actual attack on the car and ambulance, challenges that claim.)

The Voice of Hind Rajab honours and memorialises the last hours of a child in Gaza. It’s being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre until Wednesday 28 January.