Film tracking journalists in Gaza during war wins best documentary at Montreal fest

“Inside Gaza,” a documentary that follows journalists from the global news agency AFP in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in Israel, received the Best Documentary Film award at Montreal’s French-language Cinemania Film Festival on Saturday.

Directed by Helene Lam Trong, the 72-minute film follows the daily lives of four AFP journalists who bear witness to the difficulties of reporting in a war-torn territory largely closed off to international media.

The film is compiled from material produced by the team on the ground, as well as from interviews conducted after they left.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Armed men also took 251 hostages.

Israel launched a massive military response, flattening swaths of Gaza in attacks that have left 73,000 people dead, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall toll is largely accurate, with IDF officials estimating that two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative. The IDF says it has killed over 24,000 combatants in Gaza and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during and immediately after the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

Adel Zaanoun, AFP’s Gaza bureau chief and one of the film’s four protagonists, accepted the award in Montreal.

He dedicated the win to all the journalists “killed in this crazy and dirty war in Gaza” and to those “who still work on the ground without food, without water, without internet, without anything.”

He called on people worldwide to “continue to support journalists not only in Gaza,” but “everywhere for media freedom.”

The film has won multiple international awards and is eligible for Oscar contention.