‘Please don’t leave me,’ Hind Rajab pleaded. Why her voice needs to be heard
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It was brave of distributor Manoj Nandwana to try to bring The Voice of Hind Rajab to Indian cinemas. Ahead of the Oscars on March 15, Nandwana was planning a March 6 release of Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated docufiction about the slow death of six-year-old Hind in Gaza in 2024. To do so, the distributor submitted an application to the Central Board of Film Certification.
But the CBFC, more commonly known as the censor board, rejected the film, citing India’s diplomatic ties with Israel, Nandwana told Variety.
A CBFC member told him that “if it [the film] gets released it would break up the India-Israel relationship”, Nandwana told Variety.
“I told them, the India-Israel relationship is so strong that it’s idiotic to think this movie will break it,” Nandwana added.
In an Instagram post, Kaouther Ben Hania wrote, “I grew up loving India… Is the honeymoon between the ‘world’s largest democracy’ and the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ so fragile that a film could break it?”