On November 15 in partnership with Reporters Without Borders, Scandinavia House presents a screening of Inside Gaza, a powerful documentary offering a rare firsthand account from journalists who have lived and reported from inside the Gaza conflict. Director Hélène Lam Trong will be present for a film talk and Q&A. Inside Gaza is eligible to be nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.
Free access to the Gaza Strip has remained closed to international journalists since the war began on October 7, 2023. Before that time, the local team of Agence France-Presse (AFP) had become accustomed to living under the blockade of Gaza, where funerals, deprivation and exit restrictions had punctuated their daily lives for 17 years. After the Hamas attacks in 2023 and Israel’s response, they themselves became the target. They lost homes, friends and even some relatives. Their information was manipulated, distorted and questioned. Some accused them of being members of Hamas, others of being Israeli spies—placing them in grave danger from all sides.
Just over one year since the beginning of the war, they find themselves thousands of kilometers from Gaza, helplessly witnessing the events that affect colleagues and relatives left behind. In a unique storytelling approach, director Hélène Lam Trong collaborates directly with the protagonists—the journalists who recorded the footage in Gaza. The documentary blends this primary footage with additional material, recorded since the journalists’ evacuation, as they seek to rebuild their lives abroad. Drawing on hundreds of hours of footage, photographs and reporting, reporters Mai Yaghi and Adel El-Zaanun, and photojournalists Mohammed Abed and Mahmud Hams evoke the shock of escalation, the constant presence of the dead and wounded, and the burden of bearing witness. From exile, they recount a war that has become the deadliest on record for the press.
Winner of Best International Feature (sponsored by Park Road Post) & Best International Editing categories at the Doc Edge Awards 2026.
Photo: AFP’s Gaza-based Palestinian photographer Mahmud Hams takes pictures of buildings destroyed in Israeli bombardment at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 2, 2023, as battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement continue. Credit: AFP
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Hélène Lam Trong has been a journalist for 20 years. She began her career as a reporter for French public radio before turning to documentary filmmaking in 2015. She has directed more than a dozen films exploring sensitive issues in Europe and in the Middle East. In 2023, she received the Albert Londres Prize, known as the French Pulitzer, for her 72’ documentary The Ghost Children of ISIS. Her upcoming film, Ashes of Empire, explores the taboo surrounding colonial-era mixed-race identities in Indochina. Headshot: ©Jacques-Henri Heim
