‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ Gets ‘A’ Certificate, Set to Release in India on June 19
New Delhi: Weeks after refusing to clear the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab purportedly for fear of damaging Indo-Israeli ties, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has granted it an ‘A’ (adults only) certificate. The movie will release in India on June 19.
Earlier, in March, the feature's prospective India distributor Manoj Nandwana revealed to Variety that a CBFC member told him the movie – which tells the story of Hind Rajab, a real five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead – would “break up the India-Israel relationship”.
“I told them,” he recounted, that “the India-Israel relationship is so strong that it’s idiotic to think this movie will break it … But they want to censor it anyway.”
The board's decision to not grant certificate was criticised by, among others, over 90 filmmakers, journalists, academics and activists from India, Israel and elsewhere, while eight Indian MPs wrote to information and broadcasting minister Ashwini Vaishnaw seeking its release. The Hindu has noted that before it was blocked by the CBFC the docudrama was denied screening at numerous film festivals, with the exception of the Kolkata International Film Festival.
Hind Rajab premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September to a strong reception, drawing more than 20 minutes of applause and winning the Silver Lion. It was nominated at the 98th Oscar awards last year in the Best International Feature Film category, ultimately losing out to the Norwegian-made Sentimental Value.
Its director, Kaouther Ben Hania of Tunisia, had also questioned whether Indo-Israeli ties would be unable to withstand the release of this movie. “Is the honeymoon between the “world’s largest democracy” and the “only democracy in the Middle East” so fragile that a film could break it?,” she wrote on Facebook.
Less than a month prior and against the backdrop of deepening diplomatic engagement between New Delhi and Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel even as war clouds gathered over West Asia and days before the US and Israel triggered the Iran war with their strikes on Tehran.
Modi's visit also took place in the wake of the Gaza war sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 terror attack. Israel's brutal military campaign in the beleaguered Palestinian territory saw tens of thousands of Palestinians lose their lives, much of the strip's buildings suffer damage or destruction, and parts of the territory slip into famine. The scale of the devastation has prompted accusations of genocide against Tel Aviv.
This article is updated and republished at 3.37 pm IST on June 3, 2026.
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