2025 Nominees

Life and Death in Gaza

BBC Eye, BBC Storyville

UK

- Social Issues & Current Affairs

The film was made in the most difficult circumstances, by a small all female, UK-based team. With very limited access, producers Lara Elgebaly and Haya Al Badarneh and director Natasha Cox reached out to people via socials. The team felt strongly that there should be a genuine mix of Gazan voices with an equal ammount of women and men, ages and financial/class positions. After extensive checks and due dilligence, ensuring that the contributors were not politically connected to any groups, the delicate process began of coaching them to film themselves for a doc. Accustomed to using their phones for personal socials, they were trained to shoot landscape not portrait; to ensure the sound was as good as the picture and to cover as much of their daily lives as possible. The pastoral care for the contributors was intense and is still ongoing. The result is a genuinely dramatic, direct and incredibly moving portrait of human beings surviving in the midst of a war zone against all the odds.