Palestinian Actor Says U.S. Travel Rules Will Keep Him From Oscars for Gaza Film

On Sunday night, as cameras sweep across the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles during the 98th Academy Awards, one of the key figures behind an Oscar-nominated film will be thousands of miles away.

Motaz Malhees, a Palestinian actor from the occupied West Bank, plays a central role in The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia’s entry in the best international feature film category. But he says he will be watching the ceremony from home because he cannot enter the United States.

“I will not be there… I am not allowed to enter the United States because of my Palestinian citizenship,” Malhees wrote in an Instagram statement this week. “It hurts. But here is the truth. You can block a passport. You cannot block a voice.”

The 33-year-old actor’s absence highlights the collision of Hollywood’s most-watched night with a new set of U.S. travel restrictions that target Palestinians—policies the Trump administration says are driven by security concerns and critics describe as a de facto ban.

Film about Gaza child’s death reaches the Oscars

The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, dramatizes the final hours of 5-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza in January 2024 during the war there.

The film, a hybrid of documentary and drama, centers on dispatchers and paramedics at the Palestine Red Crescent Society as they try to keep Hind on the phone and coordinate a rescue while she is trapped in a car under fire. It incorporates real audio recordings from the family’s calls to emergency services.

The movie premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2025, where it won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, and has since collected nominations at the Golden Globes and British Academy Film Awards. At this year’s Oscars, it is one of five films competing for international feature, alongside entries from Brazil, France, Norway and Spain.

The project has drawn backing from prominent figures in the film industry. Among its executive producers are Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Spike Lee, Jonathan Glazer, Alfonso Cuarón and Michael Moore.

For Malhees, who portrays one of the Red Crescent call-center workers, the nomination marks a career high point. Born in Jenin in 1992, he trained and performed with the Freedom Theatre, a well-known cultural institution in the Jenin refugee camp, and has appeared in Palestinian and European productions.

“Our film The Voice of Hind Rajab is nominated for an Academy Award. I had the honor of playing one of the lead roles in a story the world needed to hear,” he wrote on Instagram. “My spirit will be with The Voice of Hind Rajab that night. Good luck to all of you. Our story is bigger than any barrier, and it will be heard.”

Hind Rajab’s story and global attention

The real events behind the film were widely reported and investigated.

On Jan. 29, 2024, Hind Rajab and her relatives were traveling in a black Kia through Gaza City when the vehicle came under heavy fire. At least seven members of her extended family were killed, including her 15-year-old cousin, Layan Hamada, who had called the Palestine Red Crescent Society to say that Israeli tanks were firing on their car. Gunfire is heard during the call before the line goes silent.

Hind later came on the phone as the apparent sole survivor in the car. In recordings released by the Red Crescent, she begged dispatchers to send help, saying, “I am so scared… Call someone to come get me, please.”

The Red Crescent says it coordinated with the Israeli military to dispatch an ambulance. Two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, were later found dead near the car, and the ambulance was destroyed. On Feb. 10, 2024, the organization announced that Hind’s body had been discovered at the scene.

Israeli officials have said they are investigating and have not publicly accepted responsibility. Independent investigations by human rights groups and research collectives, including Forensic Architecture, concluded that Israeli fire was the most likely cause of the deaths, citing geolocation, munition analysis and witness testimony. The case has been cited in reports to United Nations bodies as an example of alleged unlawful attacks on civilians and medical workers.

Hind’s name has since become a symbol in international campaigns about the war in Gaza, inspiring legal advocacy, protest slogans, artwork and several films.

New Trump-era rules on Palestinian travel

Malhees attributes his inability to travel to the United States to policies he calls a continuation of former President Donald Trump’s “travel ban.” While President Joe Biden revoked Trump’s original 2017 orders that restricted travel from several Muslim-majority countries, a new set of measures was introduced after Trump returned to office in 2025.

In mid-2025, U.S. consular posts were instructed to suspend approvals of nearly all nonimmigrant visas—such as tourist, business and student visas—for people traveling on Palestinian Authority passports, according to reporting based on leaked State Department cables. Journalists and advocacy groups say applicants from the West Bank and Gaza holding such documents have since faced near-automatic refusals.

The administration later announced it would deny and revoke visas for senior Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization officials, including travel to the United Nations General Assembly, citing concerns about incitement and support for groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.

On Dec. 16, 2025, Trump signed Presidential Proclamation 10998, expanding travel restrictions to nationals of 39 countries and to “all travelers on Palestinian Authority travel documents,” effective Jan. 1, 2026. The proclamation states that the measures are necessary because of “deficiencies in identity-management and information-sharing” and the presence of “foreign terrorist organizations operating in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Under the proclamation, most categories of entry to the United States for Palestinian Authority passport-holders—including business, tourism, study, work and most immigrant visas—are suspended, with narrow case-by-case waivers at the discretion of U.S. officials.

Immigration lawyers and civil liberties groups say that in practice the rules have made it “nearly impossible” for ordinary Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to obtain visas, even for short cultural visits or medical treatment. Supporters of the policy argue that strict controls are necessary given ongoing violence and concerns about vetting.

There is no public record of Malhees’s visa file, and U.S. authorities typically decline to comment on individual cases. His Instagram statement does not specify whether he applied and was refused or was advised that an application would not be approved under current rules. The State Department did not immediately respond to questions about whether artists in his situation could qualify for a waiver.

A recurring Oscars fault line

This is not the first time U.S. travel policy has shaped who can appear on the Academy Awards stage.

In 2017, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman won the Oscar for best foreign-language film, chose not to attend in protest of Trump’s first travel ban order. In a statement read at the ceremony, he criticized the policy as “inhumane” and said he was staying away out of respect for people barred from entering the United States.

Other filmmakers and artists from countries under sanctions or heavy vetting—including members of the Syrian rescue group known as the White Helmets—have also faced hurdles obtaining visas for U.S. festivals and awards shows.

What is different in Malhees’s case, analysts note, is that the current restrictions target Palestinians specifically, including residents of the occupied West Bank who are not themselves accused of wrongdoing. The policies have rolled out as the United States continues to supply military assistance to Israel in its war in Gaza and as U.S. campuses and cities have seen waves of pro-Palestinian protests.

An empty seat on Hollywood’s biggest night

As of Friday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had not announced any special arrangements to connect with Malhees during the broadcast. The organization has generally avoided public conflict with U.S. immigration policy, though individual nominees and presenters have occasionally used their speeches to address it.

It is unclear whether Ben Hania or the film’s producers plan to mention Malhees from the stage if The Voice of Hind Rajab wins. Representatives for the production did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

For Malhees, the contradiction is personal. A film anchored in the recorded voice of a trapped Palestinian child has carried his work to one of the world’s highest-profile cultural platforms, while he says his own passport keeps him out of the room.

“I am Palestinian, and I stand with pride and dignity,” he wrote. “Our story is bigger than any barrier, and it will be heard.”

On Sunday, that story will be projected onto the screens of the Dolby Theatre. If the film’s title is called, its director and producers will walk to the podium. One of the faces most closely associated with the movie will remain offstage, watching as his absence—and the policies behind it—become part of the story surrounding Hind Rajab’s brief life and its long afterlife on screen.