January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Her name was Hind Rajab.
I was in the middle of the Oscar campaign for Four Daughters, and mentally preparing to finally enter pre-production on a film I had been writing for ten years. Then, during a layover at LAX, everything shifted. I heard an audio recording of Hind Rajab begging for help. By then, her voice had already spread across the internet. I contacted the Red Crescent and asked them to let me hear the full audio. It was about 70 minutes long, and harrowing. After listening to it, I knew, without a doubt, that I had to drop everything else. I had to make this film. I spoke at length with Hind's mother, with the real people who were on the other end of that call, those who tried to help her.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 27 critics' reviews are positive.[21]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[22] The film received a 23 minutes and 50 seconds standing ovation at its Venice premiere, beating the previous record for longest recorded applause at a film festival of Pan's Labyrinth which had received a 22 minutes standing ovation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.[23]
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