DUBAI: Switzerland has picked “Who Is Still Alive,” 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.
The documentary, released in French as “Qui vit encore,” was directed by Geneva-based Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff, who has returned to the territory repeatedly in his work, including the documentaries “Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza)” and “The Apollo of Gaza.”
Wadimoff filmed the testimonies on a bare black soundstage in South Africa.
The nine participants — Jawdat Khoudary, Mahmoud Jouda, Adel Al-Taweel, Haneen Harara, Malak Khadra, Hana Eleiwa, Feras Elshrafi, Eman Shannan and Ghada Alabadla — traced the outlines of Gaza’s cities and neighborhoods in white on the floor, then recounted their lives around that map.
The 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.
“What the survivors of Gaza have endured cannot be told with words alone. Gestures, breaths, or silences can be more telling, sometimes,” Wadimoff said in his director’s statement.
He added that he wanted to “give visibility to the stories of a people too often dehumanized, reduced to numbers.”
The 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’s most prestigious film awards, at the Solothurn Film Festival earlier this year.
A 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.
The 99th Academy Awards takes place on March 14, 2027.
