An in-your-face close-up of a hellish nightmare in a seemingly never-ending war in Gaza, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” is a devastating reminder of the conflict’s cost on the young and utterly defenseless.

A meticulously recreated docudrama, “Hind Rajab” is an agonizing minute by minute chronicle of the fate of 5-year-old Hind Rajab who is on the phone in a bombed car in Gaza, surrounded by her murdered family, pleading for help.

An ambulance, literally minutes away, cannot come without clearance from Israeli forces.

Hind’s emergency calls reach Palestine’s Red Crescent Society who attempt to calm and rescue her but they are stymied with red tape, necessary for safe passage.

Tunisia’s Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (the documentary, “Four Daughters”) blends Hind’s actual phone recordings — which went viral several weeks after this incident — with dramatizations of the emergency workers increasingly frantic efforts to save Hind.

At its Venice Film Festival world premiere “The Voice” won the Grand Jury Prize. It is a Best Picture non-English Language Golden Globe nominee and Tunisia’s shortlisted entry for Oscar’s Best International Feature Film.

“I heard an audio recording of Hind Rajab begging for help in this car,  surrounded by the dead bodies of her family,” Ben Hania said in a Zoom interview. “I contacted the Red Crescent and asked to hear the full audio, which is about 70 minutes and harrowing. After listening, I knew I had to make this film.”

Ben Hania spoke with Hind’s mother – “I told myself, I can’t do a movie without the approval of her mother.”

It was because she needed to, “Transform this feeling of helplessness, this sadness and anger, into a movie.”

It’s been controversial by using Hind Rajab’s voice in a dramatic re-creation. “It was obvious that the recording will be the central piece. I had to find the best, not the perfect but the best, cinematic form to honor her voice.”

Her way is through the increasingly frantic Red Crescent workers. “They did everything in their power to save her. I decided to tell the story with the recording from the point of view of the dispatcher of the Red Crescent.

“I needed to go back to this moment when it was possible to save her — and not to do a documentary about an event in the past.

“This was very different from all my other movies, because I knew from the beginning that I’ll not be directing actors, because they weren’t performing. They were just authentic.

“What we have onscreen is their reaction to this voice. They were relieving that moment she was talking to the Red Crescent. I wanted to do a movie in the present.”

“The Voice of Hind Rajab” is playing at the Coolidge Corner Theatre