Original title: Venice: Kaouther Ben Hania on Gaza Drama ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’: “At Least, With This Film, I Wasn’t Silenced”
For more than a decade, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania has blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, crafting work that moves between dramatization and documentary while remaining anchored in lived experience. Her feature debut, The Challat of Tunis (2014), used documentary techniques to probe a local urban legend. Beauty and the Dogs (2017) dramatized the aftermath of a sexual assault in Tunis with unsettling precision. In 2020, she became the first Tunisian director nominated for an Academy Award with The Man Who Sold His Skin, a satirical drama about a Syrian refugee whose body becomes a commodity. Three years later, her hybrid doc Four Daughters — part testimony, part re-enactment — bowed in competition at Cannes, went on to win the prize for best documentary, and was nominated for an Oscar. Her latest feature, The Voice of Hind Rajab, which premieres in competition at Venice before heading to Toronto, pushes that interplay of documentary and dramatization furth