\n\tDUBAI: Switzerland has picked \u201cWho Is Still Alive,\u201d a documentary built from the testimonies of nine Palestinians who fled Gaza, as its official entry for best international feature film at the 99th Academy Awards.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe documentary, released in French as \u201cQui vit encore,\u201d was directed by Geneva-based Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff, who has returned to the territory repeatedly in his work, including the documentaries \u201cAisheen (Still Alive in Gaza)\u201d and \u201cThe Apollo of Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWadimoff filmed the testimonies on a bare black soundstage in South Africa.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe nine participants \u2014 Jawdat Khoudary, Mahmoud Jouda, Adel Al-Taweel, Haneen Harara, Malak Khadra, Hana Eleiwa, Feras Elshrafi, Eman Shannan and Ghada Alabadla \u2014 traced the outlines of Gaza\u2019s cities and neighborhoods in white on the floor, then recounted their lives around that map.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film carries no archival footage and no images of the bombardment, resting entirely on the accounts of the nine, who left Gaza for Egypt before regrouping for the shoot.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhat the survivors of Gaza have endured cannot be told with words alone. Gestures, breaths, or silences can be more telling, sometimes,\u201d Wadimoff said in his director\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe added that he wanted to \u201cgive visibility to the stories of a people too often dehumanized, reduced to numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2025, screening as a special event in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar. It went on to win the Prix de Soleure, one of Switzerland\u2019s most prestigious film awards, at the Solothurn Film Festival earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\n\tA Switzerland-France-Palestine co-production, the film was produced by Ketsia Stocker and Wadimoff. The Academy will announce its shortlist of 15 titles in December, with the five nominees named on Jan. 21, 2027.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 99th Academy Awards takes place on March 14, 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI: Switzerland has picked \u201cWho Is Still Alive,\u201d a documentary built from the testimonies of nine Palestinians who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-817512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}