(A frame from The Voice of Hind Rajab shows a real photo of Hind Rajab.)

Film to be Witnessed

“This is like no film that I’ve ever seen. …It is also heartbreaking and so unfortunate to me that it has to exist. …And lastly, and more importantly, I think what makes this film not only timely but timeless is the voice of Hind Rajab, and her haunting presence in this movie. And I was thinking about how does a life or an experience like this have real purpose? …And I think beyond even experiencing it, I think it is so necessary for this film to be witnessed.”

American actor Mahershala Ali offered this endorsement while introducing Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar nominated film, The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) at a screening in Los Angeles. The calm and measured pacing of his speech revealed some of the anxieties inherent in presenting a picture that is simultaneously beautiful and devastating. The film narrates the final hours of Hind Rajab’s life, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as she and her extended family were trying to escape Gaza. The docudrama feature film blends the audio recordings of Hind’s emergency calls to the Red Crescent’s ambulance service accompanied by dramatic reenactments of the center’s staff.

In his introduction to the screening, Ali reveals his own observer’s dilemma: how can one watch art that is rooted in so much trauma, and what is its purpose? Ali’s answer is that a new type of viewing must take place: witnessing. Bearing witness requires the observer to take action on behalf of the subject—accurately listening, testifying to others, and taking measures that could make the future better than the past. Ali added, “And so therefore, my prayer and my hope, is for this story to reach the ends of the earth.” Implicit in his suggestion is a question about the potency of cinema to affect viewers. How might visual culture demand action from its observer? Can artistic exhibition affect the moral action of its spectator? Ali answered this query in the moment, “… the things that can nurture and penetrate sleep hearts right now, or desensitize minds, hearts, and spaces has to be masterful storytelling. And I do think that this [The Voice of Hind Rajab] is that.”

Palestinian cinematic storytelling is having a monumental reception at the moment. Among them, The Voice of Hind Rajab has the widest accolades, including being nominated for the 2026 Academy Award in Best International Feature Film. At its world premiere in September 2025 at the Venice International Film Festival, it won the Grand Jury Prize and garnered a 23–minute standing ovation from the audience (the longest in the festival’s history).

But 2025 also debuted two other Palestinian pictures by seasoned filmmakers, Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36, and Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You. Palestine 36 tells the story of early twentieth century Palestinian resistance to British colonial rule and struggle for sovereignty. It crisscrosses between labor strikes, rural village uprisings, and political disputes in Jerusalem as the British facilitated the arrival of European Jewish settlers. Jacir’s film brings this pivotal history to life, showing these moments of Palestinian colonization and displacement that are often left out of the mainstream discourse. All That’s Left of You narrates the Palestinian experience across three generations, flashing back and forth from the 1948 Nakba (“catastrophe”) to the early 2000s occupied territories. It follows a single family and highlights the generational trauma and long-term social consequences of the creation of the state of Israel for Palestinians.

The glowing global recognition of these three films marks a transitional moment for Palestinian filmmaking. Their popularity reveals a growing interest in Palestinian stories that are told from their own perspective. They also display the important role visual media has made on public perceptions of this community by countering years of cinematic anti-Palestinian representation.

However, this interest comes on the heels of over two years of hellish images of Palestinian suffering on social media from the bombardment of the state of Israel. People have been “scrolling through genocide” and seeing the death and brutalization of Palestinians on their phones with little recourse to alter the situation. The abundance of this unfiltered record tells its own story and works in conjunction with depictions of Palestinian livelihood that are narrated through film.

Taken together, when we think about the images of Palestinians on screen over the past few years, we must ask if there is any difference between simply seeing and witnessing. Here, I hope to convince you that the rise of global Palestinian solidarity is directly linked to the presence of Palestinians on screen, initially on social media but more recently in popular culture. What has emerged for many is a principled perspective of ethical witnessing, whereby the spectator is compelled to take measures to ameliorate the suffering of Palestinians.

TikTok Verité

Images of the most recent period of Palestinian suffering began to emerge in late October 2023 on social media as Israel launched a bombing campaign in retaliation to the October 7 attack carried out by Hamas. Israeli military violence in Gaza was not new to social media. In May 2021, images of Israel’s military offensive on Gaza circulated on X (then called Twitter), revealing the destruction of infrastructure and the deaths of hundreds. 2014’s devastating airstrikes on Gaza were also captured on film and shared during an early stage in the development of Twitter engagement. The horrors of the past two years landed on TikTok, among other online spaces, which immersed viewers into first-hand visions of death and destruction. This new-ish social media sphere had a well-established audience, who had flocked to the platform during the COVID-19 pandemic, making it the most popular website with users by 2021. TikTok accounts documented the leveling of hospitals, the bombing of universities and schools, housing in rubble, and the remnants of human bodies, sometimes literally torn to shreds.

As such videos spread online, journalists like Motaz Azaiza and Bisan Owda presented the slaughter and demolition of Gaza with personalized stories about individual Palestinians. Some personal stories went viral, like the murder of Reem, a 3-year-old girl who was killed when an IDF airstrike destroyed her home in November 2023. A video of her grandfather, Khaled Nabhan, holding her lifeless body pulled from the rubble spread rapidly on social media. His lament, calling Reem the “soul of my soul,” revealed the intimate loss that so many people were going through. (Nabhan, himself, was later killed by Israeli gunfire).

The visuality of the Palestinian genocide on phone screens has been brutal to bear. But the empathetic viewer knows it’s nothing in comparison to Palestinian suffering. These difficult snapshots persuaded some TikTokers to learn more, read up on the situation and history, share Palestinian voices with their own followers, and speak up online. This grassroots movement has been a means for transforming eyewitness accounts of atrocities into global support for Palestinian liberation. For some spectators, social media “content” drew them to the streets in protest, and motivated others to create encampments on college campuses to demand their institutions do what they can to stop Israel’s ongoing attack.

(Image source: Khaled Beydoun/Substack)

Our phone screens have archived the images of Palestinian displacement and genocide. There should be no reason to have to further corroborate these Palestinian narratives when such copious evidence already abounds. But unfortunately, history shows us that the accumulation of visual proof does not lead to global consensus and resolution. Other tools for generating personal solidarity and activism have been taken up by figures with large public platforms.

Industry Responses and Palestinian Solidarity

Many cultural creatives, especially those in the film industry, have taken up the challenge of keeping Palestinians central to contemporary conversations about justice, lending their hand by supporting Palestinian films. Artists4Ceasefire made one of the first calls for action when 57 industry professionals signed an open letter to then-President Biden urging him to facilitate a ceasefire in Gaza. Over the subsequent months, more and more celebrities signaled Palestinian solidarity by wearing a pin in support of a ceasefire at red carpet events. Others in the industry joined in protest by organizing Film Workers for Palestine in September 2025, where over 1,000 signatories pledged to boycott Israeli film institutions “that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” Both Artists4Ceasefire and Film Workers for Palestine have grown to thousands of advocates, and some of the most famed celebrities have extended their efforts to raise awareness for Gaza and to support Palestinian filmmakers themselves.

While there is a rich archive of Palestinian narrative films, they have rarely broken through with success in the American market. This is part of a broader history of negative Hollywood depictions of Arabs and Muslims. In the context of the current attack on Gaza, dozens of Palestinian filmmakers formally condemned Hollywood for its role in “the relentless, decades-old dehumanization of Palestinians on small and big screens in the U.S..” Their critique was sparked by attempts by Creative Community for Peace, a pro-Israel non-profit entertainment industry organization, to disqualify the documentary short series “It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive” that was nominated (and eventually won) for a News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2024, accusing Bisan Owda of being tied to a terrorist organization. Palestinian filmmakers contended that “through our films, we have tried to present alternative narratives, depictions and images to reverse the stereotypical, dehumanizing ‘worthless, disposable beings’ image which enables the whitewashing and/or justification of the crimes perpetrated for decades against Palestinians.” Their letter of indictment inspired other creatives to organize the Film Workers for Palestine movement a few months later.

Financing and distribution has been another hurdle for Palestinian artists to break through to American audiences. One approach to disrupt this pattern has been when celebrities joined projects as producers. The Voice of Hind Rajab attracted the support of a number of celebrity producers, such as Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonathan Glazer, Spike Lee, and others, which helped the film get global distribution. Two of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s policies, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, joined Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You as executive producers. Other celebrity Palestinian supporters have hosted screenings of all three films to attract moviegoers to see these pictures and to give spaces for deeper conversation about the Palestinian experience. A new production and distribution company, Watermelon Pictures, founded by Palestinian American brothers Badie and Hamza Ali, was created with the goal of “using the power of film to amplify underrepresented voices, particularly those from Palestine and other marginalized communities.” The concerted efforts to circulate Palestinian stories in America has led to a broader engagement with its cinematic legacy and a more nuanced understanding of Palestinian history and life.

Ethical Witnessing

Palestinian representation in popular cinema is meaningful because telling these stories on screen is critical for expanding the horizon of who is seen as fully human in a media context that has long dehumanized them. Yet films can only come so close to laying out the bare facts of atrocities in Palestine. Today, the inherent challenges of cinematic representation exist alongside the devastating vision of first-hand portraits on social media. The bombardment of violence on TikTok may give some viewers reason to quickly scroll past them because these images are too much to bear. Spectator fatigue and apathy is certainly a possible consequence for some, if these are the only things they see. But artists are able to mitigate some of the forcefulness of violence and draw out the empathetic capacity for sustained engagement, and thus, plot out the possibility of hope. It is in this moment with the rising intersection of activist visual production and the role of graphic Palestinian screen presence, that has produced an ethic of witnessing whereby spectators are compelled to take action.

The combining influence of explicit visual realism and cinematic narrative storytelling has produced a new context of observational solidarity and support for Palestinians. This returns us to The Voice of Hind Rajab, which combines both of these aspects—true life tragedy and creative representation—and prompts us to consider Mahershala Ali’s principle of witnessing.

Palestinian cultural production enables viewers to acknowledge and hold the trauma of Palestinian collective punishment in ways that may not be sustainable through firsthand images of the Gaza genocide. Powerful storytelling about recent events, as well as depictions of the historical circumstances shaping contemporary situations, creates a unique ethical capacity for collective witnessing. Ethical witnessing necessitates a dialogue where the observer must account for what they see. It can spark feelings of moral obligation and responsibility that are rooted in empathetic solidarity.

Through the likes of The Voice of Hind Rajab, Palestine 36, and All That’s Left of You ethical witnessing can compel viewers to rise to action. They might demand that local theaters screen these films and that streaming services host the pictures. They might let production companies and distributors know that we want more Palestinian stories on screen. They might search out other Palestinian films and use their money as an act of solidarity. And, these activities might lead them to protest in their communities, call their representatives, or donate to humanitarian organizations, which collectively could tip the scales in favor of the Palestinian people.

Calling to Action

The present intersection of networked image-sharing and cinematic production creates a unique phase for Palestinian history. These dual visual streams simultaneously broaden exposure to the Palestinian plight while also offering authentic self-representations that narrate and portray Palestinian history and experience. The result is that Palestinians are highly visible on American’s screens today, prompting widespread solidarity efforts for Palestinians. This waking of sleeping hearts, as Ali might put it, is the product of bringing the Palestinian story to the forefront of American political discourse.

Witnessing enables citizens to demand that governments take steps to end their complicity with Israel’s subjugation and harm of Palestinians. To challenge them to levy material resources, create policies, or apply sanctions that will have impactful outcomes for everyone involved. These pictures force us to demand global accountability that honors the humanity of the Palestinian people. Artistic visual production helps produce the demands of solidarity. So, we must witness. However, we cannot let these stories only be a eulogy of remembrance; they must be a mandate for restorative justice.

Kristian Petersen is editor of Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (2021), New Approaches to Islam in Film (2021), and Muslim Horror Film & Media (forthcoming). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims.