As Hollywood continues to prevent Palestinian films from reaching wide audiences, films like Palestine 36 and The Voice of Hind Rajab have made their way into award season discussions despite production and distribution challenges. Between these two films, Palestinian-led stories are telling crucial pieces of history, drawing a clear line from past to present.
Palestine 36, directed by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir and distributed in the U.S. by Watermelon Pictures, is one of the most discussed international films of the past year. It received a twenty-minute long standing ovation after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, won the Tokyo Film Festival’s top prize, and was even named to the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature last month. But it almost didn’t make it to the big screen.
Palestine 36, which depicts the Palestinian Rebellion of 1936, is the only feature film to shoot on the ground in Palestine over the last two years. Jacir tells The Progressive that shooting with a majority Palestinian film crew on-location, primarily in Jordan, was important to give viewers an authentic look into the events that eventually led to Israeli military occupation of Palestine, bringing a distinct time period to life. But her ambitious scope faced continual challenges—circumstances on the ground became so difficult, she says, that the team had to start and stop production four times before completing the project.
“We weren’t sure we were going to be able to finish,” Jacir says. “Every single time, we had to prep the film from zero. It’s really draining, and then with the political situation, it’s emotionally difficult. The film, eventually, does feel like some kind of miracle. Palestinian films are always a miracle.”
The historical drama interweaves colorized archival footage to show Jewish refugees flocking to Jerusalem after facing religious persecution and antisemitism in Europe. The film depicts the lives of Palestinians living under British administration who come to resist colonial rule, including a female journalist who used a male pseudonym for her written articles—a character Jacir says was inspired by multiple women who resisted censorship through undercover reporting. The film also follows multiple families, farmers, and everyday people who unexpectedly found themselves part of history, with the wide ensemble cast representing the Palestinian region’s wide diversity.
Watermelon Pictures
A still from ‘Palestine 36.’
In the 1930s, tensions mounted as the British stole land from Palestinian families and workers in favor of Jewish refugees. As depicted in Jacir’s dramatic retelling of history, Palestinian workers began discovering illegal arms shipments from Britain, which sparked fear of a Zionist state-building project supported by growing military resources. These events elicited public outrage and nationalist sentiment among Palestinian people of all social classes, leading to the Palestinian Rebellion, also known as the Great Arab Revolt. During the uprising, which lasted from 1936-1939, Palestinian workers went on a general strike, uniting to fight the British occupation that had been in place since 1917. There had been earlier periods of upheaval and sparks of a rebellion, including the 1929 al-Buraq Uprising and the 1933 demonstrations against the British Mandate, which was created after the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I and designated Jerusalem as a “national home for the Jewish people,” alongside Palestinian Arabs.
Through impressively choreographed sequences during the revolt, the film demonstrates how Palestinian people fought back in the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s rule. Over the years, though, the Palestinian people were crushed; the British killed an estimated 5,000 Palestinians and wounded 15,000 others. Key Palestinian figures like Amin al-Husseini were exiled to Germany, while others were killed. Although Britain offered some concessions to Palestinian demands, including allowing restrictions on settlement and land sales to Jewish people and a measure to create Arab majority rule, the British plan still involved the creation of a Jewish state on Palestinian land. This led to the 1948 Nakba, during which Israel was established and Palestinians were violently displaced from their land.
Notably, though, the film doesn’t track the entire three years of the revolt, ending with an image of resistance as a young girl runs off into the distance after her home village is raided. With this conclusion, Jacir does two things: bring the audience a sense of hope that people will resist time and time again, while reminding us that the period of revolt and displacement never truly ended for the Palestinian people.
By contrast, The Voice of Hind Rajab confronts the Palestinian struggle in the modern day. Directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania and nominated at the Oscars for Best International Feature, the film recounts the cruel murder of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl, and her family at the hands of the Israeli military. In January 2024, the family was attacked in their car by an Israeli tank while trying to flee Gaza City; for roughly three hours, Hind was stranded in the car, the only survivor in her family, surrounded by Israeli tanks. Her last hours were spent on the phone with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), pleading for someone to rescue her, before the Israeli military killed her.
Courtesy of Willa
Motaz Malhees in ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab.’
But rather than set the action in the car where Hind was helplessly trapped for hours, the film follows the group of PRCS workers who were on the phone with Hind as she cried out for help. The film critiques the red tape within bureaucratic systems that delay life-saving measures, with its main source of tension becoming the lengthy legal process—which mandated an agreed-upon route for the ambulance and aid workers by the PRCS and a unit of the Israeli Defense Ministry, as well as clearing the air space above the scene—required to rescue Hind.
Hind’s story dominated headlines shortly following her death and prompted outcry from humanitarian organizations around the world. Before watching The Voice of Hind Rajab, the audience knows the deadly outcome. At the beginning of the film, a screen of text explains to viewers that Hind’s real voice from the recorded call with the PRCS is being used—an intentional decision made to remind viewers that they cannot separate what they are watching from what is happening on the ground in Gaza. There is no escaping the reality of a violent world, and Hind’s voice must be heard.
The film won a major prize at the Venice Film Festival, where it reportedly received the longest standing ovation in the festival’s nearly 100-year old history. The Voice of Hind Rajab has been backed by notable Hollywood figures joining as executive producers, including Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and director Alfonso Cuarón.
Courtesy of Willa
Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, and Clara Khoury in ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab.’
But despite the film’s acclaim, some critics have questioned Ben Hania’s choice to use the recording of a young girl who was brutally murdered. Some critics have said the film feels like “hollow tokenism.” Others question the ethics of profiting off of the tragedy. For example, despite ultimately encouraging people to watch the film, Egyptian film critic Joseph Fahim wrote in Al-Bustan News that “Ben Hania claims to immortalize Hind Rajab, but she reduces her to a symbol rather than a fully realized person with a brief, singular life. The inevitability of Hind’s killing is the only element that defines her. The film’s closed form prevents the child’s fullness from emerging, rendering her indistinguishable from the tens of thousands of Palestinian children who have suffered a similar fate.”
“What does that mean?” Ben Hania told Screen Daily in a recent interview after being asked about the criticism. “Does it mean, don’t speak about what happened in Gaza? Don’t speak about what happened to Hind? Because if you do, it’s exploitative? Her mother is part of the movie and I would not have even begun to make the film without her approval. [Using the recordings] was about honouring her voice and remembering her. What’s morally questionable is what happened to this little girl.”
In showing their films to festival audiences around the world, Jacir and Ben Hania have connected, reflecting on the common threads in their work.
“They go really well together,” Jacir says, after having met Ben Hania at the Toronto International Film Festival. “What’s interesting about these two films is that together, they really paint a picture of what’s going on [in Palestine] today. Our film is the origin of all of it, and her film is where we have ended up.”
As companion pieces, Palestine 36 and The Voice of Hind Rajab show how filmmakers in the Middle East and North Africa look to both the past and the present day to grapple with the timelessness of the Palestinian struggle. The quick, fast-paced editing of Hind Rajab gives the film an unshakable sense of urgency, reflecting the horrors of present day. Palestine 36, on the other hand, recalls the sweeping scale and scope of classic Hollywood historical dramas, following multiple characters until their stories intersect. While that genre often twists stories of settler colonization into white savior stories, including award-winning films like Dances with Wolves and Lawrence of Arabia, Palestine 36 consciously subverts that formula to center the Palestinian communities, artists, and writers who had their lives torn apart during the fight against British colonization and occupation.
These films arrive at a time when an increasing number of Hollywood figures speak out in support of the Palestinian cause, yet the industry at large won’t support these films or give them a wide release. In order for a film to play in a diverse selection of theaters, giving audiences a proper chance to see them, distribution is crucial. Despite high-profile actors like Emma Stone and Olivia Colman signing a pledge to boycott Israeli film companies and institutions, and No Other Land winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2025, major studios’ unwillingness to put their money behind these films reveal the institutional roadblocks that prevent Palestinian cinema from reaching the mainstream.
On January 22, Israeli authorities raided and shut down a Palestine 36 screening at the Yabous Cultural Centre and Cinematheque in Jerusalem. The projectionist was reportedly “detained and taken in for interrogation, and an official notice was later posted at the venue banning any future screenings of the film.” Ben Hania spoke out in support of Jacir’s film, writing in a post on Instagram: “This is about criminalizing Palestinian stories, and intimidating those who dare to gather, watch, and think together. Palestine will be seen.”
Following the film’s Venice premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab, there was reasonable hope that the film would land a major U.S. distributor and get a wide theatrical release. After two months, the film landed a small U.S. distributor in Willa, an American independent production and distribution company founded in 2017. To date, the film has grossed $598,132 across theaters in the United States, and has seen an extra boost after receiving an Oscar nomination and adding seventy theaters to its nationwide run. By comparison, Sentimental Value, the Norwegian film that was Oscar nominated for nine awards and distributed in the United States by indie powerhouse distributor NEON, has grossed more than $4 million domestically to date.
With the presence of acclaimed films about Palestine on awards rosters, worldwide visibility for these stories has reached a new peak. And in an industry that struggles to provide strong outlets and opportunities for international films outside of Europe to be supported in theaters, it’s up to audiences to go out of their way to watch these films and show Hollywood that there is a need—and a market—for Palestinian-led stories. Watching films like Palestine 36, set nearly a century ago, remind us that in order to fully understand the present-day atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, we must first grapple with the past, and remember all the Palestinian communities who have resisted—and those who continue to resist.
The Voice of Hind Rajab is currently in theatres; Palestine 36 starts a limited theatrical run on February 13.