Close Your Eyes Hind

Close Your Eyes Hind (2025)

Is it true that children become birds in heaven when they die?

In the midst of the war in Gaza, 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family seek safety. To escape reality, they dance to loud music in the car. Their flight is abruptly stopped by an Israeli tank that opens fire without warning. Trapped in the car, surrounded by tanks, the girls try to hold on. They comfort each other and dream out loud about a future that seems increasingly distant. They keep in touch with the emergency services, who promise to rescue them as soon as the army gives permission. What began as a search for safety ends in a tragedy that exposes the core of the war.

Date of release
2025-06-18
TMDB
9.0 / 10 (4)
Runtime
32m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
Amir Zaza

Casting

Interesting facts

Close Your Eyes Hind is a 2025 Dutch biographical war drama short film written, directed, edited, and produced by Amir Zaza, based on the killing of Hind Rajab. It stars Patel Akkad as Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by the Israel Defense Forces during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip on 29 January 2024. The film made its world premiere at a benefit screening at the Focus Filmtheater Arnhem in the Netherlands on 18 June 2025, and was broadcast on television by NPO 2 on 6 November 2025. It won the Golden Calf for Best Short Film at the 2025 Netherlands Film Festival.

Production

Close Your Eyes Hind was written, directed, edited, and produced by Syrian-Dutch filmmaker Amir Zaza, and is based on the Killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by the Israel Defense Forces during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip on 29 January 2024, which also killed six of her family members and two paramedics coming to her rescue.

Zaza followed the news about Rajab's death, and the image of her smiling face and the wreath of flowers on her head (from a photo that circulated at the time) haunted him in his dreams. 10 years prior to working on the film, Zaza had fled from Syria to the Netherlands to escape the war. He later studied at the Netherlands Film Academy and became a filmmaker. "I am not a military and not a politician. I'm a filmmaker.

For 10 months, Zaza gathered volunteers to work on the film. It started with 4 people and grew into a team of about 40 volunteers. Zaza was also allowed to freely use a professional studio in Amsterdam for the shooting. However, Zaza still needed a lot of money for set decoration, costumes, visual effects, and transport.

Zaza opted for a work of fiction based on the true story of Hind Rajab rather than a documentary. Some scenes, such as the phone calls, were filmed exactly as they happened. Zaza said he wanted to make the viewer feel as if they were sitting next to Rajab in the car and to sympathize with her thoughts and feelings.

The film's total production budget was €500,000. Zaza said that half of the proceeds will go to Rajab's family, who are still in Gaza and cannot afford to leave.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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