I first met Motaz Malhees in 2014 at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. I had visited Palestine as part of a group of British university students, and two of us decided to take a detour to visit Jenin to see its famous youth theatre. When we arrived, the streets of the Jenin refugee camp were quiet, and lined with posters of young boys and men killed in confrontations with the Israeli army. Outside the entrance of the theatre was a young actor with striking green eyes, smoking a cigarette. We asked him if he could show us inside the theatre. Malhees, then a 20-year-old student, kindly obliged and gave us a tour of the various rehearsal rooms and stages while chatting to us about the challenges of life under occupation, and his desire to continue to pursue acting beyond the confines of the separation wall.

More than a decade later, Malhees and I are sitting outside a cafe in Hackney while I interview him over coffee. Now residing in London, Malhees is in the middle of a press run for his latest film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, based on the true story of a young girl in Gaza killed by Israeli soldiers while waiting for an ambulance in 2024. He plays Omar, a first line responder from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, who receives an emergency call from five-year-old Hind as she pleads for someone to help her. The film had its world premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival last month, where it won eight awards and received a record-breaking 23-minute-long standing ovation.

Malhees’ journey – from the Freedom Theatre to international film festivals – was complicated. “I grew up in the west side of the city, where there is a lot of nature. It’s so beautiful,” he says. “But there is also a lot of terrifying stuff because it’s not a free place when it comes to movement… sometimes places can be shut down under curfew when the army is in the area, so you avoid going to the streets.” Malhees recalls memories of childhood fun playing outside – “putting two bricks down as a goal and playing football with the boys” – but also an unsettling lack of safety. “My key [to] freedom was to act, to tell the story and to talk to the world about what’s going on back home. That’s how it started with me.”

At the age of 16, Malhees left high school and auditioned for a place at the Freedom Theatre without his parents’ knowledge. “They lost their minds. They asked: ‘what is theatre going to do for you? What’s the future in that?’ They were like, ‘you better go study as an engineer, as a doctor.’” But they softened as time progressed and Malhees began to take acting more seriously. He is the first person in his family to go into the arts, though he hopes there will be more. He says that he is overjoyed when his younger nieces and nephews send him messages saying they are inspired by seeing him act. “It just makes me fly. It’s like the cutest thing on earth,” he says.

A year ago, Malhees got an audition for a life-changing role with Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania for The Voice of Hind Rajab. “Honestly, I was dreaming of working with Kaouther. I was literally sitting in my room, looking at the ceiling, thinking ‘please, I want to work with somebody like Kaouther Ben Hania’,” he recalls. “I was manifesting maybe. She’s a genius. She’s a proper director. Amazing, so smart.”

“Sadly, it [happened] with a movie that breaks the heart,” Malhees continues. The emotional toll of making a film based on Hind Rajab’s tragic story during an ongoing genocide was daunting. “I read the script and I didn’t stop crying from the beginning to the end,” he says. “I felt so scared to do the role because it’s a big responsibility. It’s based on a true story. I was like, ‘am I emotionally fine to do this? Will it destroy me mentally?’ I started to have these thoughts, that maybe I need to pull out. But something just in me said, ‘no, you must do this.’ So I poured my heart into the story; I tried to honour the role I played and the whole story as much as I can.”

Malhees attributes a lot of his success to his early training at the Freedom Theatre. “The way they teach you, it’s hardcore,” he says. Malhees was mentored by Juliano Mer-Khamis, a well-known Jewish-Palestinian actor, director and activist who helped establish the theatre with his mother Arna, and taught generations of Palestinian children in Jenin to channel their emotions into acting. Mer-Khamis was assassinated by an unknown assailant in 2011. 

“Juliano was a crazy man,” Malhees tells me. “He taught me loads. He was not an easy teacher, he would take us early in the morning to run to the mountain. He breaks your ego. He would tease you, embarrass you, go hard on you, but he was getting the best out of us, may his soul rest in peace.” In Malhees’ eyes, Mer-Khamis is a “legend [...] the godfather of the theatre”. He continues: “He wanted to make a real change through art. I think without Juliano, maybe I wouldn’t be here doing this interview right now with you. When I was studying, he asked me: ‘are you going to be one of those actors who come for a while and then leave?’ And I was like, ‘I promise you, I will never stop acting’. I hope I keep my promise.”

Touring with the Freedom Theatre gave Malhees the opportunity to travel the world. But transitioning into cinema was something new for him. “Getting into cinema, it’s not an easy thing, especially in my country,” he says. “You need to have a showreel – and if I didn’t do any films, how could I have a showreel? So that was my struggle.” The first person to cast Malhees was Palestinian director Ameen Nayfeh. “And from there, I started doing cinema.”

It’s so important to tell this story now, right now. Not tomorrow, not after tomorrow, right now. Because it’s not stopping. Why be an artist if I’m not going to talk about stories like this?

Still, making the film was incredibly challenging for Malhees, and brought up a lot of painful feelings. “Once I heard her [Hind Rajab’s] voice, I felt like somebody was squeezing my heart,” he says. “I held the hand of Amer Hlehel – he’s the guy who plays Mehdi – and I was like, ‘please just let me sit with you’. He really supported me. Everyone on set supported me.” As we speak, his eyes well up as he recalls the experience. “For me, it was kind of different – because I grew up in Jenin. I’ve seen and I’ve witnessed and I’ve lived things that are horrific. I was having flashbacks to my childhood that made me realise I never really sat down to deal with any of the traumas I’ve been through in my life.”

When the film premiered, media coverage exploded overnight, with clips of its record-breaking standing ovation at Venice Film Festival going viral on social media. In videos that have since amassed millions of views, Malhees can be seen holding a Palestinian flag up on stage next to the cast and crew of The Voice of Hind Rajab to a room of applause. “I woke up in my room where I was staying and somebody knocked at the door to bring me a thick wad of newspapers,” he recalls. “And they were like, ‘look, you are in the newspaper’. I even hugged that guy who brought [the papers] and I was like, ‘bless you, you just made my day now’.”

With The Voice of Hind Rajab hitting the headlines and gaining international recognition, it has also received some pushback alongside the rave reviews. I ask Malhees about some of the critique levelled against the film – namely that it may be ‘too soon’ to tell the story of a child killed in a genocide that is still ongoing, or that it may give an opportunity for people to passively observe Palestinian suffering and pat themselves on the back for it, rather than actively take a stand against Israeli oppression. “Before I got the script, I sat with myself and asked ‘can I do really a movie about the genocide while it’s ongoing?’,” he recalls. “And then I started reading the script, and I realised it’s so important to tell this story now, right now. Not tomorrow, not after tomorrow, right now. Because it’s not stopping. Why be an artist if I’m not going to talk about stories like this?”

“When you see the movie, you’ll understand why we did this,” he continues. “I understand also if there are some people who are angry and frustrated, asking how we could do something like this while the genocide is going on. You can be with your own feelings. You have the right to, but give the movie a chance and go watch it. Then you'll understand why we made it.”

Every now and then, we pause our interview because somebody that Malhees knows walks past and he stops to greet them. He tells me that he has found community in London since moving four years ago, after taking up calisthenics strength training at Broadway Movement in London Fields. “Every time I’m free I go and work out with these amazing people. They gave me a sense of community in London. I do two, three, four hours sometimes and we do gatherings, we go make dinner together,” he says. “A kind of family, you could call it. They made me feel at home.” He explains that his newfound hobby and “releasing energy through working out” helped him deal with the impact of taking part in the film and the ongoing tragedy in Palestine.

I ask Malhees what he hopes that people will take from the film, and what message he has for the world. He tells me: “Be the echo of the voice of Hind Rajab, tell the world to go watch it, tell your people, tell your families, your colleagues. You need to see this movie to understand more about us as Palestinians, and what’s going on in Palestine,” he says. “I’m not gonna tell you what you need to do about it – we are so tired of asking the world to stand up and do something. But we deserve freedom like the rest of the world. Enough of dehumanising us –  it’s enough.”