The documentary “Dans Gaza,” directed by Hélène Lam Trong, received the best documentary award at Montreal’s Cinemania Francophone Film Festival on Saturday, 14 November. Across 72 minutes, the film follows four Agence France-Presse journalists: reporter Mai Yaghi, Gaza bureau coordinator Adel Zaanoun, and photojournalists Mahmud Hams and Mohammed Abed.
The film recounts the first seven months after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. With free access to the enclave blocked, international outlets came to rely on Palestinian journalists on the ground to document the conflict.
For more than 200 days, the four reporters worked under bombardment, confronting the same shortages as the rest of the population while also trying to protect families directly exposed to the war.
A film made without entering Gaza
A journalist for about two decades, Hélène Lam Trong gradually moved into documentary filmmaking. Her credits include “Daech, les enfants fantômes,” which won the Albert Londres audiovisual prize in 2023.
AFP approached her about “Dans Gaza” in January 2024, three months into the war.
The director was never able to travel to the Palestinian enclave, as the Israeli army barred free access for the international press.
The four reporters agreed to testify, though no one knew whether they would be able to leave Gaza. After they were eventually evacuated with their families through Egypt, the director met them in Cairo. The film was built from their accounts and, above all, from footage they had shot in the course of their work for AFP. Nearly 85% of the documentary relies on their own images.
In Montreal, Adel Zaanoun accepted the prize on behalf of the team. He dedicated it to journalists killed in the war in Gaza and to those still working in the field, “without food, without water, without internet, without anything.”
On track for the Oscars?
Made in 2025, “Dans Gaza” is a Franco-Belgian co-production involving Factstory Docs, AFP’s documentary subsidiary, ARTE France and RTBF.
The film had already been recognized at Sunny Side of the Doc in La Rochelle before winning both the Grand Prix and the Audience Award at FIGRA in April 2026, then two prizes at New Zealand’s Doc Edge festival in July for best international documentary and best editing.
That trajectory now raises the possibility of a nomination in the best documentary category at the 2027 Oscars.
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