No Other Land filmmaker represents Palestine on Oscars red carpet
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Khaleej Times
21 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Top stars and directors head to Venice for high-powered 2025 festival
Hollywood stars, Oscar-winning directors, Asian heavyweights and European auteurs will vie for top honours at this year's stellar Venice Film Festival, all looking to make a splash at the start of the awards season. Running from August 27 to September 6, the 82nd edition of the world's oldest film festival will showcase a rich array of movies that spans psychological thrillers, art-house dramas, genre-bending experiments, documentaries, and buzzy studio-backed productions. Among the leading A-listers expected to walk the Venice Lido's red carpet are Julia Roberts, Emma Stone, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac, Cate Blanchett and Amanda Seyfried. Netflix returns A who's-who of global directors will also be premiering their latest pictures at the 11-day event, including US filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow, Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Benny Safdie, alongside top Europeans Yorgos Lanthimos, Paolo Sorrentino, and Laszlo Nemes, and Asia's Park Chan-wook and Shu Qi. Netflix, which skipped Venice last year, returns in full force in 2025 with a trio of headline-grabbing titles, including Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, a new take on the classic horror tale starring Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth. Baumbach's comedy-drama Jay Kelly, starring Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern, is also in the main competition and on the Netflix slate, alongside the geopolitical thriller A House of Dynamite, with Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, and directed by Bigelow, who won an Oscar in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Venice fires the starting gun for the awards season, with films premiering on the Lido in the last four years collecting more than 90 Oscar nominations and winning almost 20, making it the place to be seen for actors, producers and directors alike. In the past nine editions of the Oscars, the award for Best Actress or Best Actor has gone eight times to the protagonists of films first seen in Venice, including Stone for her role in Poor Things in 2024. Stone returns to Venice this year, teaming up again with Poor Things director Lanthimos in an offbeat satire, Bugonia. One film that looks certain to raise emotions is Kaouther Ben Hania's The Voice of Hind Rajab, which uses original emergency service recordings to tell the story of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza in 2024 after being trapped for hours in a vehicle targeted by Israeli forces. "I think it is one of the films that will make the greatest impression, and hopefully (won't be) controversial," said the festival's artistic director, Alberto Barbera, his voice trembling as he recalled the movie.
Broadcast Pro
a day ago
- Broadcast Pro
Kaouther Ben Hania's ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab' to premiere at Venice Film Festival
Ben Hania obtained the full 70-minute recording from the Red Crescent, spoke with Hind's mother and rescuers, and crafted a script centered on silence, fear, and the agonising wait for help, rather than visible violence. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania's latest feature, The Voice of Hind Rajab, will premiere in the main Competition at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 27 to September 9. The announcement was made by festival director Alberto Barbera, who described the film as a profoundly moving work likely to leave a lasting impression on both audiences and critics. The Voice of Hind Rajab has been nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's top prize. The film centres on the harrowing true story of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed along with six members of her family during an Israeli attack in Gaza in 2024. While fleeing Gaza City, their car was shelled, killing Hind's uncle, aunt and three cousins. Hind and another cousin initially survived and contacted the Palestine Red Crescent Society for help. Days later, their bodies were discovered along with the paramedics who had attempted a rescue. The tragedy drew global attention, with protests erupting around the world. At Columbia University, students renamed Hamilton Hall to 'Hind's Hall,' and American rapper Macklemore released a protest anthem bearing the same name. According to the official synopsis, the film begins on January 29, 2024, when Red Crescent volunteers receive a desperate emergency call. On the other end is a six-year-old girl trapped in a car, pleading for rescue as gunfire rages outside. The Red Crescent team does everything in their power to reach her in time. Her name is Hind Rajab. Ben Hania, best known for her acclaimed documentary Four Daughters, which premiered at Cannes in 2023 and earned an Oscar nomination, revealed that the decision to make The Voice of Hind Rajab was deeply personal and immediate. While traveling for Four Daughters' awards campaign, she came across an audio clip of Hind's final call for help. The impact, she said, was instant and transformative. 'I heard the sound of her voice, and I felt the ground shift beneath me,' Ben Hania recalled. 'In that moment, I knew I couldn't carry on with my original plans. I had to make this film.' She added: '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. I listened, I cried, I wrote. 'Then I wove a story around their testimonies, using the real audio recording of Hind's voice, and building a single-location film where the violence remains off-screen. That was a deliberate choice. Because violent images are everywhere on our screens, our timelines, our phones.' She concluded: 'What I wanted was to focus on the invisible: the waiting, the fear, the unbearable sound of silence when help doesn't come. Sometimes, what you don't see is more devastating than what you do. 'At the heart of this film is something very simple, and very hard to live with. I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes. That pain, that failure, belongs to all of us. This story is not just about Gaza. It speaks to a universal grief. And I believe that fiction (especially when it draws from verified, painful, real events) is cinema's most powerful tool. More powerful than the noise of breaking news or the forgetfulness of scrolling. Cinema can preserve a memory. Cinema can resist amnesia. May Hind Rajab's voice be heard.'
Broadcast Pro
2 days ago
- Broadcast Pro
‘My Father and Qaddafi' becomes first Libyan film at Venice in 13 years
Jihan K's debut traces her search for her father, Mansur Kikhia — Libya's former foreign minister, UN ambassador, and peaceful opponent of Qaddafi. Marking an entry onto the global festival stage, My Father and Qaddafi, the debut feature documentary by Libyan filmmaker Jihan K, will celebrate its world premiere out of competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, running from August 27 to September 6. The film makes history as the first Libyan title to be featured at Venice in over a decade, offering a deeply personal and political narrative rooted in the country's turbulent history. Written and directed by Jihan K, the 88-minute documentary unfolds as an emotional investigation into the mysterious disappearance of her father, Mansur Rashid Kikhia, a former Libyan foreign minister, UN ambassador, and vocal non-violent opponent of Muammar Qaddafi's regime. Weaving together archival material, testimonies and personal reflections, the film charts Jihan's search for understanding, memory and identity, as she retraces her mother's nearly two-decade-long pursuit of truth and justice. Though she has no memory of her father, Jihan's journey becomes a way to reconnect with him and confront her fragmented sense of belonging. Commenting on her film, Jihan K said: 'In my documentary film, My Father and Qaddafi, I delve into the memories of others to create a clearer picture of my father, a man I do not remember. Making this documentary helps me understand the importance of a father figure and the impact of losing a father on a family, a community, and even a country.' The film is a joint US–Libyan production, produced by Jihan K and Mohamed Soueid, with executive production by Dave Guenette and Sol Guy. Additional producers include Andreas Rocksén and William Johansson Kalén of Laika Film, while Jayson Jackson and Mohamed Siam served as consulting producers. Shahla Karkouti Elms joined the project as associate producer. Shot by cinematographers Micah Walker and Mike McLaughlin, and edited by Alessandro Dordoni, Nicole Halova and Chloe Lambourne, known for her work on the Oscar-nominated For Sama, the documentary features Jihan K, Baha Sobhi Al Omary and archival appearances of Rashid Mansur Kikhia. Distribution for the Arab-speaking world is being handled by MAD Distribution, with MAD World managing international sales. Throughout its development, the film attracted support from prominent global institutions, including the Doha Film Institute, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, International Documentary Association, CineGouna, International Media Support, Hot Docs-Blue Ice Docs Fund, Malmö Arab Film Festival, the Swedish Film Institute, and more. It also participated in several international development and pitching labs, such as the Close Up Lab, DFI Qumra, Durban Filmmart and First Cut Lab. Jihan K, who studied International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Paris and completed her master's at New York University's Gallatin School, has long focused on human rights and storytelling as tools for empowerment. Her 2012 essay, Libya, My Father, and I, published in Kalimat Magazine, presaged the themes that now come to life in her feature debut.
