Movies of War

Mar 13, 2026 7:30am PT How ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ Producers Helped the Subject’s Family Evacuate Gaza After the Film’s Venice Premiere By Alex Ritman Plus Icon Alex Ritman @alexritman Latest Sky Acquires Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Crime Thriller ‘Blood on Snow,’ Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Aaron Taylor‑Johnson (EXCLUSIVE) 5 hours ago Netflix Makes Cuts to Global Product Team as Part of Reorg 22 hours ago ‘The Traitors’ and ‘Celebrity Traitors’ Staying at BBC Until at Least 2030 Following Three-Year Deal 1 day ago See All "The Voice Of Hind Rajab" (Courtesy of the Venice Film Festival) “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Kaouther Ben Hania’s powerful and moving docudrama about the 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli forces in 2024 while trying to flee Gaza, heads into the Oscars this weekend as a best international film nominee. The feature has amassed big name supporters from around the world, including Alejando González Iñárritu, Fernanda Torres, Jessie Buckley, Alfonso Cuaron, Brad Pitt, Spike Lee and many others. But on Sunday night, there will also be a group cheering the film on from Greece. For it’s there where Rajab’s mother, Wissam Hamada, and her family now reside, being looked after by Elpida Home, a dedicated nonprofit community that helps house refugees that have escaped various conflicts around the world. Related Stories Jon Stewart Slams Trump for Keeping Press in the Dark About Iran War: 'Our Bombs Are Now Smarter Than Our President' Robert De Niro Calls on Americans to 'Resist' Donald Trump and 'Save the Country': 'Trump Is Destroying It. It's Sick. It's F---ed Up' This wasn’t the case when “The Voice of Hind Rajab” had its world premiere in Venice, however. As the audience on the Lido were giving the film a teary 22-minute standing ovation, the Hamada family was still in Gaza City in the midst of a deadly war and desperate to leave. Popular on Variety As it happens, what would prove to be an exceptionally complicated mission to get Hamada and her family of eight out of the territory ended up being mostly arranged and overseen by an executive producer of the film. Amed Khan, a financier, human rights advocate and philanthropist who has held positions in the U.S. Peace Corps and both Clinton/Gore presidential campaigns, was one of the first people who came on board to help finance the movie in its infancy. The tragic story of Rajab was one he hadn’t just heard about, but was entrenched in what he says he’s been doing for years — trying to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate people from warzones through his Amed Khan Foundation, currently operating in both Gaza and Ukraine. “As soon as they called me and said they were planning on making a movie about it, it was a no-brainer,” he says. “I’ve been kind of doing this in the shadows for years and there’s never been any light on it. And most of the time it’s kids and families. So I think I agreed the same day.” While “The Voice of Hind Rajab” was in production in early 2025, reports of starvation were coming in from Gaza, and Hamada — who herself was suffering alongside her family (including parents, siblings and infant niece) — messaged director Ben Hania to ask if she could help source food. Knowing that Khan was operating his Foundation inside Gaza, the film’s producer Odessa Rae reached out to him. “Within four hours, his team had gotten her a bag of flour,” she says. “So then they started relying on Amed’s team for more and more.” But a few weeks before Venice, the situation had intensified and Hamada and her family were now frantic to get out. Communication difficulties because of internet and cellphone connection issues meant the filmmaking team were now mostly talking via Hamada’s brother, who had already fled Gaza. Khan was again brought in to help. James Wilson, Kaouther Ben Hania, Nadim Cheikhrouha, Wissam Hamada and Odessa Rae at the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards (Photo by James McCauley/Variety via Getty Images) Variety via Getty Images Through a long-standing relationship with the Greek government that has seen numerous other evacuations into the country over the years, including from Syria and Afghanistan, Khan got the case passed to the foreign ministry, which worked to get the crucial asylum approval. “And once you’ve got that landing point, then you can start moving,” he says, adding that, with asylum agreed, focus then shifted to the Greek consulate in Jerusalem, working in tandem with the Israeli authorities on the physical logistics of the evacuation including travel and timing. But as Khan notes from experience, it’s still a grindingly slow process, one with numerous bureaucratic hurdles and endless approval processes that crop up almost each and every step of the way. And this was even when a White House official got involved. “You know, it’s gets approved, and then it gets postponed for a couple of days, and it gets postponed for a holiday, then a Saturday,” he says. “But you’re just pushing and pushing, asking it we can get this thing moving.” Khan recalls a “soul-crushing” earlier attempt at getting a woman and her daughter out of Gaza, only for them both to be killed in separate airstrikes days apart while they waited for the necessary green-light. Making things even more “harrowing” for the Hamada family was that by September 2025, Israel had launched a ground offensive deep into Gaza City. “We were saying to them: You need to leave Gaza City,” recalls Rae, who says she received a video from Hamada’s brother of a missile hitting the house “literally in front of them.” With Khan and the producers trying to pull every string they could, including contacts in the U.S. government, the call eventually came through and the IDF told Hamada to get her family to the central Gazan city of Deir al Balah the next day by 1 p.m., where they’d get another call. Khan’s contacts on the ground found a taxi to take them, which they piled into having left almost all their belongings behind. As he asserts, the family were “obviously freaking out, because there were tanks going down the street.” The Hamada family were staying with a friend in Deir al Balah when the call came through (a day late) and simply told them to wait. So they did. Khan says that in the repeated requests to Israeli authorities, they were simply told the evacuation was not yet approved. Around 10 days would pass before another call came on Sept. 24, 2024, and the next morning a car, organized by the Greek authorities, took them to the Kerem Shalom border crossing into Israel in a motorcade being escorted by both the IDF and Israeli Shin Bet security agency. But even when they reached the Ramon airbase, nothing was remotely straightforward. For such special evacuations, Khan says commercial flights aren’t possible so private jets are required. “You need the landing point, you need a private plane, you need to get a permit and all the various approvals and then you need the Israelis to cooperate,” he says. “There’s lot of moving parts and you don’t know whether it’s going to happen until the plane actually lands — because it could be turned around mid-air.” The first two planes Khan chartered didn’t get the necessary approvals (either to do with the plane itself or the crew) and were turned back. By this point, Rae says she thought it was “never going end, that we’re not going to be able to get them out.” But for his third try, through a friend Khan found an Israeli plane from Tel Aviv that, as he claims, “had some juice with the authorities.” But then he was told an Israeli crew couldn’t take people from Gaza. To bypass this, they pulled off the flight attendants and catering, even down to the cups, plates, knives and forks (understandably upsetting the plane’s owner). “It was literally the only thing we could do that was going to get the approval,” he says. It worked, and all nine of the Hamada family climbed aboard and safely arrived in Thessaloniki in Greece on Sept. 25, 2025. “These evacuations are all impossible — and each one you could make a movie about,” says Khan. Less than six months on, Hamada has traveled far and wide to speak about the killing of her daughter, the situation in Gaza and the need to “keep Hind’s voice alive.” She gave a speech at the opening of the Doha Film Festival in November, and also spoke at conferences in Copenhagen and a solidarity event in Barcelona. Last month she attended the BAFTA Film Awards, where “The Voice of Hind Rajab” was nominated, and more recently addressed a special screening of the film at the United Nations office in Geneva. She won’t, however, be able to attend the Oscars on Sunday. As per Donald Trump’s travel ban, Palestinian passport holders cannot enter the country. Says Rae: “We tried talking to a lawyer, and he said the only way to get her in was if Marco Rubio signs the entrance permit himself.” The Hamada Family after arriving in Greece on Sep. 25, 2025, with Amed Khan on the left Jump to Comments ‘How to Make a Killing’ Director Explains That Twisted Ending, Rewriting the Final Scene and Why ‘Golden Retriever’ Glen Powell Made the Perfect Serial Killer Benicio del Toro’s ‘One Battle’ Dance, Timothée Chalamet’s Final ‘Marty Supreme’ Game and More Standout Scenes from Oscar Contenders Why Mayor Karen Bass Showed Up for Cinespace Studios’ Ribbon-Cutting and What It Means for Hollywood How ‘& Juliet’ Became an Against-the-Odds Hit on Broadway ‘SNL’ and ‘Always Sunny’ Sketch Duo BriTANicK Are Drawing Comparisons to Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger With Two SXSW Comedies Mike Tirico’s Tough Task: Iron-Man Sportscaster Works Endlessly to Draw Big Crowds for NBC’s Primetime Sports Pivot JavaScript is required to load the comments. Loading comments...