Cinema

Gaza Dominates the Oscar International Race

Three countries have entered Gaza films for the international Oscar, and Israel's government is fighting its own film-makers for the second year running.

Husam Sam Asi 3 October 2026, 11:14

Osama Al-Ashi with his child in Citizen Osama, directed by Ahmed Hassouna, Palestine’s entry for the international feature Oscar. Film still supplied on the Venice Film Festival’s official film page.

Gaza is the story of this year’s race for the international feature Oscar. When submissions closed on 30 September, three countries had each entered a film about the territory: Palestine, Switzerland and Iran. Israel, meanwhile, is losing the argument on its own ground. For the second year running, its government is fighting Israeli film-makers over what they show of the Palestinians.

Three films, three flags

Palestine’s entry, Citizen Osama, was shot in northern Gaza by Ahmed Hassouna. For 69 minutes he stays close to Osama Al-Ashi, an art photographer who became a chronicler of the war, from the birth of his son in the eighth month of the fighting to the boy’s first birthday. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September.

Switzerland chose Nicolas Wadimoff’s Who Is Still Alive. Nine Palestinians who escaped Gaza walk across a map of the Strip painted in white on a black floor, stop at the places they came from and recount what they lost.

Iran’s entry is the outlier. Land of Angels, directed by Babak Khajehpasha, is a drama about Gaza’s children that won best film at Tehran’s Fajr festival. It was filmed in Tehran and co-produced by the Soureh Cinema Center, the film arm of a state-linked arts body. Gaza’s story now has governments competing to tell it.

A second year on the Academy’s ballot

The entries follow a breakthrough. Last December three films about Palestine reached the Academy’s shortlist of 15: Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36, sent by Palestine; Cherien Dabis’s All That’s Left of You, sent by Jordan; and Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, sent by Tunisia and built around the phone calls of a child trapped in a car under fire in Gaza. Ben Hania’s film went on to a nomination. Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Jonathan Glazer were among its executive producers, and Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem backed Dabis’s. Before that, only two Palestinian entries had ever been nominated: Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now and Omar.

Israel loses the story at home

The sharper contest is inside Israel. Last year the country’s own film academy chose The Sea as its Oscar entry: the story of a Palestinian boy turned back at a checkpoint who sets out to reach the beach at Tel Aviv. Culture Minister Miki Zohar responded by saying of the academy’s awards that “this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money”. The government had disowned the film sent to Hollywood in Israel’s name.

This year the same minister has turned on NAZA, the documentary by the Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor about how targets were chosen in Gaza, which won the Special Jury Prize at Venice and is now in cinemas. Zohar has said he will “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship” of both, one of several threats Israeli officials have made against the film’s directors.

Israel’s entry this year, Tell Me Everything, is a family drama set in 1987. In both of the past two years, the films its government attacked were made by Israelis. A state that once shaped how the world saw this conflict is now struggling to control how its own film-makers show it.

Hollywood’s studios hold their line

The films arrive in an industry whose studios have held their position. When more than 4,000 film workers pledged last year to refuse work with Israeli film institutions, Paramount condemned the pledge and Warner Bros. followed. Both studios are being combined under David Ellison, whose family’s support for Israel is public. For decades Hollywood cast Palestinians as terrorists and punished stars who spoke up for them. The stories reaching Academy voters this year come from outside that system.

What happens next

The Academy will vet the entries, which number more than 90, before announcing its shortlist on 15 December. Nominations follow on 21 January and the ceremony on 14 March. Under rules introduced this year, the film is credited as the nominee and the director collects the award, which would put Hassouna, Wadimoff or Khajehpasha on stage in the film’s name.

Sources: TheWrap; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; The New Arab; The Hollywood Reporter; Variety; Times of Israel; Al Jazeera; BroadcastPro ME; Business Doc Europe; Cineuropa; Tehran Times.