Every year I watch as many of the Oscar nominated movies and shorts as possible before the awards ceremony (Tonight!). This way I get to see movies I might not have otherwise known about. Highlights this year included a fantastic short called The Singers (available on Netflix) about men in a dark bar down on their luck who engage in a contest for a $100 bill to see which one is the best singer; Sinners, a genre-bending vampire movie about racism in the South, about enduring and the power of music, Hamnet a story of grief, remembrance after the loss of a child, and Butterfly, an animated short about a swimmer from child to old age and the loss and joys in between. I usually write a blog entry about my favorites, but end up never posting it because it has nothing to do with EMS, and I think people don’t read my blog to hear my take on movies. This year is different.
Yesterday I watched a movie called The Voice of Hind Rajab, which was nominated for best foreign picture. I didn’t know anything about it, but the trailer grabbed my attention. The movie is a docudrama recreation of a phone call the Red Crescent ambulance center receives from a five-year-old girl trapped in a bullet-ridden car in Gaza with her dead family. The movie uses real audio files from the call as she pleads for someone to come save her. “I’m scared,” she says. The movie focuses on the emotions of the dispatchers as they talk with her and try to coordinate a rescue. The nearest ambulance is only 8 minutes away, but it takes hours to get clearance for an ambulance to go in. The dispatchers argue with their supervisor to please just send the ambulance. They call him a bureaucrat and a coward. He points to all the crews they have lost before and says he has to keep them safe. There is no rescue without the green light. To get the green light he has to work his way through the system, dealing with friend and foes, all the while his own staff is rebelling against him. Through it all we hear the voice of the little girl as darkness falls. Several times they lose touch with her and are devastated she has died and they have failed. Communication is restored, the ambulance finally gets clearance to rescue her. We watch the ambulance’s slow progress on the map. It is within two hundred feet of her. They tell her she will be saved, rescue is close. There is an explosion. Then silence.
I don’t want to talk a stand on this war in their post. There are claims of genocide on one side and claims of the other side using ambulances to transport weapons and troops. That’s not what this movie is about. It is about the voice of a little girl and the efforts of people to save her. It’s about heroism. It’s about helplessness. About moral injury. About humanity. The trailer says this movie will stick with you. That is true.