The documentary ‘With Hassan in Gaza’ by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari has been nominated in two categories at the European Film Awards, set to take place in Berlin on Saturday, according to Euronews.

The film was recently screened at the 14th Athens Innovative Film Festival, where it drew wide attention for its intimate portrayal of life in Gaza before its large-scale destruction by the Israeli army.

Shot in 2001 and rediscovered more than two decades later, ‘With Hassan in Gaza’ is composed entirely of archival footage that Aljafari had long forgotten.

At the time, the filmmaker travelled to Gaza in search of a former prisoner in Israeli jails, whom he had lost contact with after 1989. Accompanied by Hassan, a local guide, Aljafari journeyed from northern to southern Gaza, documenting everyday encounters in markets, along the seashore, and across towns and landscapes during the second intifada.

Although Aljafari never found his friend, he recorded daily life in Gaza without the intention of making a film. After returning to his studies in Cologne, the footage—stored on three MiniDV tapes—remained untouched for years. The tapes were accidentally rediscovered in July last year, prompting the director to revisit the images and transform them into what he describes as “my first film that I didn’t make.”

Speaking to Euronews Culture at the Greek Film Archive, Aljafari said the rediscovery of the tapes felt “like a sign of life, against extinction.” As he watched the footage, he realized it had become a visual testimony to people and places that no longer exist.

“The footage that was shot in 2001 in order to find a friend is now becoming a film about finding all these people, all these faces and all these places,” he explained. “It became essentially a testimony to everything we see there.”

Aljafari chose not to edit or remove any part of the original material, believing that cinema plays a crucial role in preserving memory.

“Gaza has been completely destroyed and many people have been killed,” he said. “Film has a key role in preserving memory and preserving life that no longer exists.”

The documentary offers an unfiltered road-movie portrait of Gaza in 2001, capturing both the harsh realities of life under Israeli occupation and the natural beauty of the land. It reveals the severe restrictions on movement, the presence of violence, and the deep sense of confinement experienced by Gaza’s residents long before the current war.

Reflecting on the present, Aljafari described the ongoing destruction of Gaza as a “total catastrophe,” with schools, homes, and hospitals wiped out, leaving no possibility of normal life. For him, presenting images of Gaza as it once was—without showing its current devastation—is a deliberate “act of resistance against the erasure of memory, against the occupation.”