TIFF 2025: The voice of Hind Rajab, unidentified, the fence | Festivals and awards

The cultural specificity of part of the world which is too rarely highlighted during international films festivals join films in this dispatch, even if the trio feels so different. Docudrama, a thriller and a social commentary which takes place as an act in one act, these three works have little in common structurally even if they all recall cultures which deserve more attention from criticism and moviegoers. Unfortunately, only one of them really works, a surprising truth since the other two were made by filmmakers who have already succeeded in similar waters.

The best of the three is a film that did not make many radars before Venice but has become a must in Tiff after it has emotionally devastated the Italian public. Kauther Ben Hania’s “Daughters Four” were a breakthrough for the Tunisian filmmaker, which earned him an Oscar nomination for the best documentary feature. She uses her skills with a non-fiction cinema with an emotional effect with crushing “The voice of Hind Rajab”, ” A story of the events of January 29, 2024, a large part of which took place on social networks. Le Monde listened to a six -year -old child named Hind Rajab called the Red Crescent Rescue Center in Gaza to point out that his whole family had been murdered by Israeli soldiers. While she was lying in her car on the bodies of her aunt, her uncle and four cousins, she begged the rescuers to come, transforming into a symbol for the human cost of the deployment genocide. The Red Crescent Stakeholders were forced to wait until the region was clear enough to save Hind Rajab, their growing frustration with each cry of “save me”.

Ben Hania makes the daring choice to use Hind Rajab’s real vocal recording in the film, without leaving the Red Crescent. A clearly worse and more exploiting version of this film throws someone as Hind Rajab and shoots images on the scene of the murders. Keeping the public with artists playing exhausted people at the other end of the line, it avoids not only all kinds of arguments on interpretation, it puts us in the place of people who feel more and more helpless against horror acts.

It goes further, including even video sequences of superimposed speakers on phones in key scenes. It is a bit difficult to explain, but images of people who spoke to Hind Rajab who were recorded on smartphones will often be retained on the actor playing this person. The “films” of Ben Hania’s camera, the real images being filmed with his blurred artist in the background. It is a daring choice that strengthens its efforts to include as much historical veracity as possible. A large part of what is happening in this region has been distorted and interpreted. Ben Hania’s greatest success can be in the way she disseminates all of this by artistically presenting this tragic event.

The questions will hinder the release of the film. How is “Hind Rajab’s voice” better than a documentary on the same subject? Well, the truth is that people do not see as much the non-fiction films that they make historical leisure. And the amplification of his voice is the clear goal here. Second, is it the exploitation of using the voice of a murdered girl? Her mother has clearly agreed, because images of her are included, and a large part of the audio here has been published before the production of the film, which makes use of the material available more than anything else. I am always a little in conflict when a tragedy involving a child is used in cinema, but I also believe that real action sometimes requires being confronted with visions of real horror instead of simply reading or hearing about them. “The voice of Hind Rajab” is the confrontation that his victim deserves.

Much less effective is the deeply frustrating “Unidentified,” The latest thriller by Haifaa Al-Mansour, who directed the wonderful “Wadja”. As specific and fascinating as this drama in 2012, this film is depressing and generic, a film which never searches below the surface for the majority of its execution time before taking a hard Just in a ridiculously undeserved termination of torsion which makes the boredom which preceded that it feels even more insulting.

Nawal (Mila Alzahrani) is a receptionist in Riyadh, someone who makes copies for her male counterparts and looks at a fascinating video flow all the time, the one who mixes makeup advice and real crime stories. (In fact, I would have preferred to look at this for 100 minutes.) When a young woman without identification on her body is in the desert, Nawal is sucked in in the case, first investigating by herself before receiving the approval of the police chief to arrive at the bottom of him. Thought is that Nawal can get closer to the girls who knew the victim, discovering things that his male superiors could not or would not care anyway. The feminist themes boil below the surface of “unidentified”, but too few of them gain in traction by character work or even the conception of production, which gives the impression that the discussion points instead of writing that are really interested in the biases of humanity or gender.

A thriller that uses social problems as a simple window covering would be one thing but “unidentified” becomes something much more insulting in his final scenes, turning everything that had preceded him. Al Mansour has spent a large part of the last decade to do television thrillers like “The Sinner” and “City on Fire”, and I fear that it will appear with the dull visual language of this film and the non -sincere plot.

Another disappointment comes from the big Grande Claire Denis, although “The fence” Just enough to continue to justify a look for the filmmaker’s supplers behind masterpieces like “Beautiful work”, “Disorder Every Day” and “35 rum clips”. In this case, she adapts the game of Bernard-Marie Koltes Black battles with dogsAnd there is a feeling that something is lost through the translation of the impression of the French playwright of African culture filtered through a French filmmaker and in characters played by British and Americans. The dialogue has an idle rhythm that makes it look more like theater, which is a perfectly beautiful choice but drains a play which has the impression that it reaches veracity in something more informed. Solid performances help give it a little form, but that does not help it also resembles a project with the themes that Denis has better explored in other projects.

Matt Dillon plays Horn, the supervisor of a construction site closed in Africa which is confronted with a man on the other side which requires the body of his brother. A local villager, Alboury (Isaach de Bankole) insists that the deceased returned immediately, even though Horn tries to make his way to do it in all possible ways. It offers money, it promises to deliver the body tomorrow, etc. No, this must happen now, even if this exchange will occur before Horn’s wife, Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce). Meanwhile, the colleague of Tom Blyth, Cal, who clearly knows one thing or two about the “accident”, lurks the ground behind Horn, while waiting for what looks like an inevitable calculation.

“The fence” is essentially a four -character piece and the quartet since the roles are all effective. Dillon transmits an increasing insufficiency to the challenge placed in front of him while Blyth represents a different form of foreign invader, that which sings the “midnight and burns” in its introduction without considering that it is itself a fire. They are both shallow and helpless men, but they receive power due to money and control. The problem is that “the fence” does not have much more to offer after having exposed its themes very early in the drama. He then serves above all at his conclusion, lacking in emergency, tension or dynamics. It is ultimately a curiosity in the legacy of a career of a great director more than a new link in his channel.