Hélène Lam Trong’s documentary film, Inside Gaza, which chronicles the daily lives of journalists at the Agence France-Presse (AFP) bureau in Gaza in the first months following the October 7, 2023 attack, will be screened at several film festivals and broadcast on television this fall in Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy.
Featuring never-before-seen footage and testimonies from reporters Mai Yaghi and Adel Zaanoun, as well as photojournalists Mahmud Hams and Mohammed Abed, Inside Gaza “does not claim to explain the conflict, but rather shows that these reporters risk their lives so that the public can continue to have access to independent and reliable information,” the director explains. These four journalists, seasoned reporters and long-time AFP contributors, describe the extreme difficulties of doing their job in a war-torn territory, where they also have to protect their families.
In the spring of 2024, all AFP reporters working in the territory and their families were evacuated. Since then, the agency has relied on Palestinian freelancers who remained on the ground, who continue to document the reality of the war in a territory that has been off-limits to international journalists since the beginning of the conflict.
Inside Gaza will premiere at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy, dedicated to documentary and investigative journalism, on September 28, and then at the Bayeux-Calvados-Normandy Prize for War Correspondents on October 9.
The film will have its world premiere on September 24 during prime time (8:20 pm) on the Belgian French-language public television station RTBF, followed by subsequent broadcasts in Switzerland (RTS), Germany, and very soon on ARTE in France.
This French-Belgian co-production is a collaboration between Arte France, RTBF, and FACTSTORY, with the participation of AFP, the support of RTS, and in partnership with Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The film also received funding from the National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC), the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre, the Belgian tax shelter scheme, Procirep (the French film producers’ association), ANGOA, and the Proarti Foundation.
Hélène Lam Trong notably won the Albert Londres Prize in 2023 for her documentary “Daesh, the Ghost Children.”
