This award shines a light on the work of those who have continued to inform the world from Gaza.
The documentary “Dans Gaza”, directed by Hélène Lam Trong (source in French), was awarded on Saturday 14 November the prize for best documentary film at the Cinemania Francophone Film Festival in Montreal. Over 72 minutes, the film follows four Agence France-Presse journalists: Mai Yaghi, reporter, Adel Zaanoun, Gaza bureau coordinator, and photojournalists Mahmud Hams and Mohammed Abed.
The documentary portrays the first seven months after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. With free access to the enclave blocked, international media then relied on Palestinian journalists on the ground to document the conflict.
For more than 200 days, these four reporters worked under bombardment, despite the danger, while facing the same shortages as the rest of the population. At the same time, they had to protect their families, who were directly exposed to the war.
A film made without ever being able to enter Gaza
A journalist for around twenty years, Hélène Lam Trong gradually shifted towards documentary filmmaking. She notably directed “Daech, les enfants fantômes”, which earned her the Albert Londres audiovisual prize in 2023.
For “Dans Gaza”, she was approached by AFP in January 2024, three months after the start of the war.
Yet the director was never able to travel to the Palestinian enclave. Free access for the international press was banned there by the Israeli army.
The four reporters had agreed to testify, but no one knew whether they would ever manage to leave Gaza. When 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 the footage they themselves had shot as part of their work for AFP. Nearly 85% of the documentary is based on their own images.
In Montreal, it was Adel Zaanoun who accepted the prize (source in French) on behalf of the team. He dedicated it to the journalists killed in the war in Gaza, but also to those who continue to work in the field, “without food, without water, without internet, without anything“.
Heading for the Oscars?
Made in 2025, “Dans Gaza” is a Franco-Belgian co-production bringing together Factstory Docs, AFP’s documentary subsidiary, ARTE France and RTBF.
The film had already been recognised at Sunny Side of the Doc in La Rochelle, before winning in April 2026 both the Grand Prix and the Audience Award at FIGRA, then two prizes in July at the Doc Edge festival in New Zealand, for best international documentary and best editing.
A trajectory that now opens the way for a possible nomination at the 2027 Oscars in the best documentary category.