“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.

“I asked myself this basic question, what can I do? I’m a filmmaker, so I can do movies.”

She adds: “We started working on The Voice of Hind Rajab that way to not feel helpless, to not accept, to bear witness.

“Because not doing it, for me, was being complicit in a way.”

Hind Rajab’s car was hit by suspected Israeli fire as she and her family tried to flee bombing during the two-year war in Gaza.

Several family members were killed, but Hind managed to answer a callback from the helpers at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The ambulance trying to reach her was also shelled, and Hind, her family, and the ambulance crew all died.

The Israel Defence Force initially stated none of its troops had been in the area where Hind and the others were killed.

But that suggestion was questioned following independent investigations by research agency Forensic Architecture, in colloboration with NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) Earshot and journalists from Al Jazeera, which concluded that damage to both the car and the ambulance was consistent with Israeli tank fire.

The IDF later said it had “conducted raids on terror targets” with forces operating in neighbourhoods in Gaza City, including Tel al Hawa, from where Hind had made her emergency call.

The UN cited her case in a commission of inquiry accusing Israel of war crimes, which it denies.

An IDF spokesperson told the BBC it is still being reviewed by Israel’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism (FFAM).

Ben Hania’s film sets out to tell the story – in Arabic and English – of what happened to Hind and her family, from the perspective of the Red Crescent volunteers at the Ramallah call centre in the occupied West Bank.

It is “based on true events” and “anchored in truth”, Ben Hania says.

“At some point, with all this proof, I thought that we are done explaining”, she adds.

“Cinema can do something better, which is provoking empathy.”

The feature mixes audio of the girl’s heart-rending real final phonecalls with the Red Crescent, with a visual dramatisation using actors to represent the volunteers.

They try to keep her calm and conscious as it becomes clear she is surrounded by the dead bodies of her relatives.

Critics have praised the emotional impact of the performances, while noting the problems inherent with mixing documentary with drama.

Variety’s Guy Lodge said it was “impossible not to be moved” by the recording at the heart of the hybrid film, heard at an “agonising distance”.

But he felt “the ethics and execution of the concept are questionable”.

In a four-star review, The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin said the feature “transcends shock value” and presents viewers with “an ethical dilemma”.

“I dreaded watching this film,” he wrote. “Yet having now seen it, I find my mind changed, thanks largely to the philosophical diligence of Ben Hania’s approach.”

The director – who received the blessing of Hind’s mother, Wesam, before making the movie – says she did her best to “respect the testimony” of the volunteers and what they told her about that day.

She did not reach out to the other side, because, she says: “My movie is not an investigation.

“The investigation was already done,” she adds, with reference to aforementioned findings, as well as those made by other major news providers including the Washington Post and Sky News.

Increasingly stressed scenes play out in the film between call centre worker Omar, played by Motaz Malhees, and his boss Mahdi, played by Amer Hlehel.

Mahdi is seeking a safe route approved by the Israeli army – via intermediaries – for his paramedics to make the eight-minute journey to carry out the rescue attempt.

Omar becomes exasperated at his boss’s insistence on trying to negotiate with Israel.

Actresses Saja Kilani and Clara Khoury, as fellow call centre workers Rana and Nisreen, respectively, complete the ensemble cast of actors of Palestinian origin.

We watch them hear the sound of gunfire or an explosion in the background before the phone connection is lost entirely.

“Even the actors, at some point, stop acting,” says their director. “They weren’t performing.”

Malhees confirms this. He tells us he suffered panic attacks during filming and thought his heart was “going to explode” during one scene, which for him was “like a real conversation with a child”.

“It was a hard experience, but it’s worth everything to give.”

His director stresses she wanted to share with the audience what she had felt the first time she had heard the girl’s call for help. “I thought that she was almost talking to me, to save her”.

She told herself: “I need to go back to this moment when it was possible to save her.” Before “the war, mainly, failed her”.

In another four-star review, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said there is “a reckless, ruthless kind of provocative brilliance in what Ben Hania is doing”.

He wrote: “Is it in bad taste? Problematic? Well, in a world where directors busy themselves and us with made-up stories about made-up people, Ben Hania is at least grabbing one of the most relevant issues of our time with both hands and finding a way to thrust it under our noses.”

The main question for Ben Hania when making the film was always: “How to make the voice of this little girl echo?”, she explains.

“Because the world don’t want to hear it. It’s not a comfortable thing to face.

“And for me, it was important to honour her voice and to make it resonate beyond borders.”

Worried that it would be perceived as “niche”, the filmmakers reached out to some famous Hollywood faces – including Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara – who signed up as executive producers.

Phoenix and Mara were in attendance when the film received a record 23-minute standing ovation following its September world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it also won the grand jury prize.

“I was like, when will they will stop?” recalls Ben Hania of the “incredible reaction”.

“And actually they stopped because the theatre asked us to leave, because there was another movie!”

“There was a moment of solidarity for real,” adds Mahlees. “You could feel that the people are there with you. You are not alone in this world.”

Pope Leo XIV has arrived in the Lebanese capital Beirut a week after Israeli air strikes hit the Lebanese capital.

For a man known for being measured and careful in what he does, it seems quite the statement to land in a country so affected by conflict in what is his first foreign trip.

The Pope has already spent three days in Turkey and, watching his diplomacy at close quarters, we are learning a little more about how he intends to carry out his duties as both spiritual leader and head of state of Vatican City.

Pope Leo’s interactions with journalists are gentle and softly spoken, and his words always appear thought out and deliberate.

His predecessor, Pope Francis, often spoke at length to reporters, sometimes very passionately and from the heart.

But sometimes that meant his aides had the job of risk management, having to explain statements that appeared to be a departure from what the Pope had previously said or a diplomatic faux pas.

Pope Francis wrote in his autobiography that when his papacy began in 2013, he felt that he would only have two or three years in the role. He certainly acted like a man on a mission, quickly trying to put into motion his vision for the Church.

Six months into his papacy, Pope Leo still looks like a man who is taking in the gravity of the role, and weighing up his options. There are times when he can appear slightly emotional about where he finds himself.

At the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Istanbul, as he stood at the altar before the congregation made up of the tiny Christian minority that had welcomed him so warmly and joined worship with him, the pope took a moment where he even appeared to be holding back tears.

In a way, it was reminiscent of that moment in May when he stepped on to the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, having just agreed to take on the daunting task of leading well over a billion people in something so personal and sensitive as their faith.

As a statesman leading the Vatican, he can often appear to be in listening mode, but on this trip, Pope Leo has shown that he can still issue some strong statements.

Standing next to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he decried powerful countries flexing their economic and military might, blaming that for heightened levels of conflict around the world and saying “the future of humanity is at stake”.

At an event marking 1,700 years since a hugely significant Christian council in what is now the Turkish city of Iznik, he said: “We must strongly reject the use of religion for justifying war, violence, or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism.”

On the plane from Istanbul to Beirut, when addressing the decades old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, he said the only solution had to include a Palestinian state.

“We all know that at this time Israel still does not accept that solution,” he said but quickly followed that up by saying the Vatican was still “friends with Israel” and was seeking to be a mediating voice.

Pope Leo’s first act in Lebanon, a country with huge governance issues, was to sit alongside the country’s leading politicians and remind them they should be dedicated to the service of their people.

The Pope himself has described the purpose of his visit to both Turkey and Lebanon as to be “a messenger of peace”. There is no question that in Lebanon in particular there has been a great deal of anticipation.

“It means a lot to me. He could have visited other countries, but he gave priority to Lebanon while it is still at war,” Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi, leader of the Maronite Catholic Church (to which most Lebanese Christians belong) told the BBC.

“He brings hope when the Lebanese feel abandoned and we feel uplifted,” he says.

The Pope’s visit here provides a boost to the third of the country that is estimated to be Christian, but all Lebanese have been granted a two-day national holiday and those from all major faiths have welcomed him.

Even Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim political party and militia considered a terrorist organisation by countries including the UK and US, conveyed its greetings.

In an open letter, the group talked of a “full welcome” and “deep appreciation” for the Pope’s “honourable presence”. Among the Lebanese and Vatican flags being waved as his motorcade drove from Beirut’s airport, there were Hezbollah flags too.

While in Lebanon, Pope Leo will meet Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi, but also other local Christian, Muslim and Druze leaders.

He has certainly cast himself as a bridge-builder; between peoples, faiths, Christian denominations and even closer to home, becoming pope as he did at a time when divisions between progressive and traditionalist Catholics appeared to be growing.

There are, of course, limits to the ambition of togetherness.

In Turkey when the Pope wanted to bring together different Christian traditions to celebrate a time when they had all been united, the Russian Orthodox Church did not send a representative.

There will always be criticism. Some were left disappointed that the Pope did not use his visit to Turkey to deliver a message to Erdogan about the suppression of opposition or jailing of journalists.

Some in Lebanon are angered that Pope Leo is not visiting those most directly affected by war.

“No one has even asked about us,” said Geryes Jabbour, who is from the Christian village of Sarda, near the Israeli border.

“We are worn out, we have been set back decades, but we are not even on the Pope’s mind,” he said, echoing the views of some others in southern Lebanon.

That day in May, Leo may have suddenly (and for him perhaps unexpectedly) acquired one of the most powerful moral platforms, but on a human level, he is still a man from South Side Chicago growing into a role where one wrong step could have huge ramifications.

Unlike Pope Francis he does not seem like a man looking to shake things up quickly, but Pope Leo has shown on his first foreign trip that he is finding his voice on the world stage.