Palestinian Film Thirteen in Gaza to Premiere at Toronto Film Festival

Thirteen in Gaza, the first fiction film fully shot in Gaza in 12 years, is heading to the Toronto International Film Festival for its world premiere in the Centrepiece programme.

Directed by Gaza filmmaker Hosam Abu Dan, the film was made with Palestinian actors and crew amid war. It follows Raghad, a 13-year-old girl, and her father after their home is destroyed by bombing. They move into a crowded displacement camp, where Raghad faces puberty, grief and the loss of privacy.

Her father tries to protect her while struggling with poverty and worsening conditions. His situation becomes more complicated when he becomes involved with Khalil, a trader profiting from the wartime economy. To survive, he must confront difficult moral choices.

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At that moment, I asked myself how we could continue making a film in a place like this, and how cinema could survive when the price was so much suffering.

The production itself faced immediate danger. Abu Dan recalled that on the fourth day of filming, a bomb exploded near the set and seriously injured a crew member. “At that moment, I asked myself how we could continue making a film in a place like this, and how cinema could survive when the price was so much suffering,” he said, according to Screen Daily.

Despite the conditions, the team completed the film. It is the first fiction feature made in Gaza since Hany Abu-Assad’s The Idol in 2014. MAD World, the Cairo-based sales division of MAD Solutions, has acquired worldwide sales rights. Abu Dan said one of the project’s central aims was to bring fiction filmmaking back to Gaza after more than 12 years. “Now, as the film heads to its world premiere in Toronto and begins its international journey with MAD, I feel it has become more than just a film we made during the war,” he said.

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Now, as the film heads to its world premiere in Toronto and begins its international journey with MAD, I feel it has become more than just a film we made during the war.