"They're shooting at me. Please come get me. I'm scared."
When filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania first heard the emergency phone call recording of Hind Rajab, a frightened six-year-old Palestinian girl begging for help while under siege in Gaza City in 2024, on social media, she says she immediately knew what she had to do.
Hitting pause on the movie she was about to make, the Tunisian two-time Oscar-nominee called her producer and they agreed to shift focus to telling the story of the girl, who was killed - likely by Israeli fire, according to a number of media investigations - along with her aunt, uncle and cousins, and two paramedics sent to save her.
"It haunted me," Ben Hania tells BBC News about the voice recording, which is the centrepiece of her Oscar-shortlisted docudrama, released in UK cinemas last Friday.
"I was really angry, I was sad, I felt helpless, and I hate it when I feel helpless.
