UVM graduate turned esteemed film producer Jon Kilik is visiting campus to discuss his work as executive producer on the Oscar-nominated film “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” will be screened at 6:00 p.m. in Billings Ira lecture hall Wednesday, April 29. The screening will be accompanied by a talk and Q&A with Kilik, hosted by the English Department.
From UVM to the Academy Awards
Kilik’s journey from UVM to the film industry is the kind of rare success story that many young professionals dream of.
When Kilik attended UVM in the 1970s, he had not planned on pursuing film.
“After some of my other arts and science requirements were taken care of, I just sort of stumbled on film,” Kilik said. “I had an interest in it and music and movies and all, but I had no idea that you could work in that or find a way into the industry.”
After graduation, he worked at WCAX: first sweeping floors, then working up to operating the camera for news shoots and commercials.
“That was kind of my film school,” Kilik said.
Nine months later, he left Burlington and hitchhiked to New York City, where he couch surfed and knocked on doors trying to find any work he could in the film industry.
Kilik got his first job in the industry after reaching out to a UVM alum who was working as an assistant director in the city.
“She said, ‘All right, I’ll give you a chance,’” he said.
She gave Kilik a job sweeping floors, once again and doing whatever he could to work his way up as a production assistant, gaining experience and making connections along the way.
“[I was] working on other people’s movies that were some of the best movies of the 80s, and with some of the greatest directors and history of filmmaking, Scorsese, Woody Allen, John Hughes, Alan Pakula, Sidney Lumet,” he said. “I mean, all the legends.”
After eight years of working as a production assistant on various projects, writing and producing his own film, a mutual friend introduced Kilik to another young filmmaker who had just made his directorial debut and had just begun work on a second film.
“That [filmmaker] turned out to be Spike Lee and the movie turned out to be ‘Do the Right Thing,’” he said.
The odds were against them, Kilik said, but once the film was made, everything changed for him.
“That was my big break,” he said. “Wow, yeah, that was my overnight success.”
Kilik’s accomplishments since then are innumerable. He has continued to work closely with Spike Lee, producing fifteen more films together, such as Malcolm X, Clockers, He Got Game and Da 5 Bloods.
He has also collaborated with many other celebrated directors, such as Julian Schnabel, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Bennett Miller, Jim Jarmusch and Oliver Stone, to produce countless groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed films.
His filmography includes such titles as “A Bronx Tale,” “Babel,” “Miral,” “Broken Flowers” and the original Hunger Games trilogy.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which he worked on as an executive producer, is his twelfth film to receive an Academy Award nomination.
Producing “The Voice of Hind Rajab”
Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” reconstructs the true story of Israel’s brutal murder of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl alongside her family in Gaza in the winter of 2024 through the eyes of the dispatchers who tried to save her.
On Jan. 29, 2024, an Israeli tank fired on a car carrying 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family while they attempted to flee Gaza City, killing everyone in the car except Hind and her 15-year-old cousin, Layan.
While Israeli occupation forces continued to shoot at them — forensic evidence later revealed 455 bullets had been shot at the car — Layan was able to call the Palestine Red Crescent Society for help before being shot and killed.
Hind, crying for help and surrounded by the dead bodies of six of her family members, stayed on the phone with emergency services who tried to coordinate her rescue for around 70 minutes before the line was cut.
Upon first responders’ arrival on the scene, the Israeli occupation army — which had advance knowledge of and had approved the ambulance’s route and purpose — shelled the ambulance, killing two paramedics, in a deliberate move to sabotage the rescue attempt, according to a March 23 Al Jazeera article.
The audio recording of her final moments was widely spread on social media and sparked international outrage, according to a June 23, 2024 Al Jazeera article.
The film uses the real recording of Hind’s phone call with emergency services, interspersed with actors’ reconstruction of the Palestine Red Crescent Society dispatch office. The cinematographic blending of real footage with recreation like this is known as docufiction.
“It’s not just her voice, but those cell phone recordings that are in the movie too. That’s real, yeah, so it gives the story a gravity and the account an undeniable representation of what’s happening in truth,” Kilik said.
Kilik joined the film late into the process.
“The film was up and running and had most of its financing before I even heard about it. I heard about it late, as they were finishing it, but they still needed a lot [of help].”
Despite having the names of such Hollywood heavyweights attached, such as Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuaron, Jonathan Glazer, Michael Moore and Spike Lee, the film still struggled to find support and distributors in the U.S.
Kilik is no stranger to producing films that stir controversy and challenge the status quo.
“They needed to find U.S. distribution. They needed to, you know, kind of figure out how to get into the American market and into the awards,” Kilik said.
Although the film received a record-breaking 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere, its quality was ignored by U.S. film industry insiders due to the possible risks of supporting a Palestinian film, according to an Oct. 10, 2025 Deadline article.
Through the blending of real-world audio with fictional elements, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” makes it impossible for the viewer to ignore the truth of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“There’s something very intense about sitting in a dark theater for an hour and a half. You are really living inside this world. When you go into a movie theater, you suspend your own life for a couple hours, and you’re in the lives of these people,” Kilik said.
The Israeli government has directly killed over 20,000 children in the first two years of the genocide in Gaza, with many more deaths likely caused by the Israeli-imposed siege and destruction of infrastructure. Hind Rajab is one of thousands.
“It’s basically like a living Diary of Anne Frank,” Kilik said. “And that is not what everybody wants to hear, because it’s painful.”
