With Hassan in Gaza, a documentary by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, has been nominated in two categories at the European Film Awards, following its recent screening at the Athens Innovative Film Festival.
The film is built from footage Aljafari shot during a 2001 journey through Gaza with a local guide, Hassan, while searching for a former political prisoner he never found. Recorded originally without plans to make a film, the material was rediscovered more than two decades later on three MiniDV tapes, prompting Aljafari to shape it into a documentary.
The result is a poetic road movie capturing everyday life in Gaza at the time—its streets, markets and people—offering what the director describes as a cinematic act of resistance against the erasure of memory. Shot during the second intifada, the film documents the constraints of life under occupation while preserving images of places and faces that no longer exist.
With Hassan in Gaza has already won the Special Jury Prize in Athens and the Europa Cinemas Label Award at the Locarno Film Festival, where it premiered. It is now shortlisted for Best European Documentary and Best European Film at the upcoming European Film Awards ceremony in Berlin.
