In a tent in central Gaza, a women’s film festival is born
Attenders at the opening of the Gaza International Festival for Women’s Cinema, Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, 26 October 2025
Ibtisam Mahdi reports in +972 on 4 November 2025:
At the end of a makeshift red carpet laid down between destroyed buildings in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah, a few dozen Palestinians sat in front of a large TV screen. A hush fell as the film began, with attendees shifting between somber focus and audible sobbing as they watched their experiences of the past two years reflected back to them over the next hour and a half. The film was “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” and the screening marked the opening of the inaugural Gaza International Festival for Women’s Cinema.
“I cried while watching the film,” Nihal Hasanein, one of the attendees, told +972 Magazine after the screening on Oct. 26. Earlier this year, she lost three of her sons in an Israeli airstrike on her home in Beit Lahiya; now, she’s living in Deir Al-Balah’s Al-Jazaeri camp, where the film was screened. “It brought back memories of losing my children all at once, along with my home,” Hasanein said.
Directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” reconstructs the murder of 5-year old Hind Rajab and six of her family members by Israeli soldiers as they attempted to flee Gaza City by car in January 2024. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival in September, it received the Grand Jury Prize as well as a 23-minute standing ovation from the audience. It has subsequently won several other prestigious awards, making it one of the most acclaimed Arab works of the year. The screening just south of Rajab’s home city in Gaza was the first in the Arab world.