Martial law: "Once upon a Time in Gaza" is the first film about the aftermath of October 7 at the box office

For the first time in Russia, a film about the war in the Gaza Strip, shot after October 7, 2023, is being released. "Once upon a Time in Gaza" won the prize for directing in the "Special Look" competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025 and was highly appreciated by international critics. In it, drama and tragedy coexist with farcical situations, and it stands out from a whole wave of paintings on a theme that no major film in the world can do without today. Izvestia tells us why the film should not be missed and what other works on this topic are worthy of audience attention.

What is the movie "Once upon a Time in Gaza" about

Despite the status of the "Special Look" program, where Cannes usually takes experimental films, and the prestigious prize for the Arab brothers and Tarzan Nasser for directing, "Once upon a Time in Gaza" strikes with lightness and humor despite the objective gloom of both the plot and the context. The script was written before October 7, the time of action is actually 2007, but everything in this film suggests that it is about today. Including the caption "One day it will end" against the background of the sky.

The heroes of the film are the owner of a diner in Gaza and his young assistant named Yahya. Explosions of Israeli shells are thundering in the city, coffins of Hamas martyrs are being carried through the streets of the demonstration, and ordinary people lead the most ordinary life, as if everything is in order. In their free time, our heroes write prescriptions for themselves and use them to buy powerful sedatives in pharmacies, and then sell them like drugs, hiding the doses in the pit. A drug control officer kills the owner of a diner, and it seems Yahya's turn is coming soon, but then an incident happens. Yahya is invited to play the role of a martyr in a Hamas propaganda film because of his resemblance, and the young man suddenly becomes a local star, although he can hardly pronounce the lines prescribed in the script. And he has only one complaint about Israel, which the other characters blame for all the troubles: he was not given permission to visit his mother in the West Bank.

The film caused a mixed reaction. Someone said that it ridiculed the suffering of the people of Gaza and their faith, and did not sufficiently emphasize Israel's guilt in what was happening. Someone thought it was unethical to joke at a time when people were dying in the war. Someone argued that it was criminal to insult Israel in the frame after October 7.

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What to watch about the war in Gaza

If "Once upon a Time in Gaza" is an exotic phenomenon for Russian rentals, then critics and supporters of Nasser's paintings from other countries have plenty to choose from. Let's talk about the main works on this topic.

Among the most high—profile films is "The Voice of Hind Rajab," which was directed by Tunisian director Kauter Ben Hania. The film won a Special Jury Prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and caused a scandal that has not subsided to this day. The whole action is confined to the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent, where the operator receives a call from a six-year-old girl. She reports that she is sitting in a car where all the passengers, her relatives, are dead, and they continue to shoot around. It takes several hours before they manage to send an ambulance for Hind, but the car was hit on the way, and the connection with the girl was lost.

History has already become a sad symbol of events. But the shock was caused by the director's method. Kauter Ben Hania used real recordings of the girl's voice, and the actors played out the actions of the Red Crescent staff as close as possible to the real ones, that is, we have a docudrama. And this strongly affects the psyche of the viewer, who knows that the film "plays" a child who tragically died. For some of the audience, this was the final argument against Israel. Another part wrote indignantly that the investigation had reached a dead end and that it was still necessary to find out what really happened. As a result, the painting turned from a work of art into a tool for heated discussion and became one of the most scandalous film stories of the past year. And the ovation after the premiere lasted 23 minutes.

Other notable paintings include "There is No Other Land." The film, which won the Berlinale Best Documentary award at the beginning of 2024, and then the European Film Academy award. Technically, this story is not about the war. In the story, a West Bank activist and an Israeli journalist are fighting against the eviction of fellow villagers by the Israeli army. But since the premiere took place shortly after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, the film became a kind of flagship of the wave of anti-Israeli cinema and, as some critics say, made this topic a trend.

The almanac From Ground Zero consists of 22 short stories shot in Gaza by local filmmakers in various techniques. There are reportage documentaries, game plots, and animation — a kind of collective look at the tragedy of Gaza. After its high-profile premiere in Toronto, the film went through festivals around the world and was submitted for an Oscar from Palestine.

The prize for the best feature debut at this year's Berlinale was awarded to documentary filmmaker Abdullah Al-Khatib for the French-Algerian film Chronicles of the Siege, where the fighting hints at Gaza, although the Palestinian city is not directly called that. At the award ceremony, the director accused the German government of supporting Israel, which caused a political scandal.

In Cannes in 2025, "Put your soul on your hand and go" by Iranian Sepideh Farsi about the photographer and poet from Gaza Fatima Hassan was shown. It is based on video conversations that Farsi recorded with her character at various times. Hasuna was later killed in an IDF strike on her home. The film split the film press again. For some, he became proof of the genocide organized by Israel, and their opponents argued that Hasuna openly supported the October 7 terrorist attack, participated in the funeral of militants and, possibly, was associated with Hamas.

The film "The American Doctor," directed by Po Teng, was presented at Sundance this year. In fact, there are three doctors there, and all of them work in hospitals in Gaza. The characters in the film make several statements, including claiming that there are no "militant tunnels" in Gaza, and all this is just an excuse to bomb civilians. They say that warnings before strikes don't save anyone. The film shows how doctors make presentations in the United States, trying to get the country to stop supporting Israel. Demonstrations in support of Palestine took place on the streets during the festival.

Two more potentially high-profile films have been announced at the Venice Film Festival, which will be held in a month. This is the documentary "Citizen Osama" about a war photographer who is filming the war in real time in northern Gaza and trying to protect his wife and newborn child. And there is also the game "Conversations with the Seas" — about a Palestinian in Jerusalem, whose son mysteriously drowned in the Red Sea many years ago, and the Israeli Ministry of Bituah Leumi demands to pay his son's accumulated social insurance debt.

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An Israeli view of Gaza

All of these films belong to the part of the cinematic wave that condemns the war in Gaza, the army and the Israeli government. They are charged with a powerful anti-war pathos and are perceived by the whole world as calls to stop the bloodshed. In turn, there is a fairly decent body of Israeli cinema, which is also filled with reflection on the theme of this war. And there, October 7 becomes the main semantic core.

Screams Before Silence by Anata Stalinsky is a doc about the evidence of sexual violence during the attack on October 7. "We'll Dance Again" replays the massacre at the Nova Music Festival minute by minute. And before that, Dan Peer's film #Nova was released, which consisted only of video footage of the festival participants. Peer released it two months after the terrorist attack, and there was also a scandal because Netflix refused to buy the film due to "politicization," and as a result, the picture was taken away by Prime. The two-hour Bearing Witness dock is based on the testimonies of survivors of the terrorist attack.

The Horizons program of the Venice International Film Festival 2024 featured a painting by Dani Rosenberg "About Dogs and People," where a girl returns to a kibbutz ravaged by militants to look for a dog. Some of the residents are being held hostage, including her family. The shooting took place in a real kibbutz, where real residents who were attacked participated, and the fighting in the frame was not special effects. The film was shot next to the war.

Brandon Kramer's documentary "Embracing Liat" won a prize at the Berlinale, showing conflicts and tension in a family where a daughter remains held hostage by Hamas. Tom Shoval directed the documentary "Letter to David", a kind of appeal to actor David Kunio. Kunio once played in the debut film of Shoval, and then he was taken hostage, and he remained in captivity at the time of the premiere. It is also worth noting the film "The Beauty from Gaza" by Yolanda Zauberman, which tells how Israel saves women from violence in Gaza and provides them with shelter.

The premiere of The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue by Barry Avrich became very scandalous. This is a doc about a retired IDF officer who rushed to help his family, who could have been taken hostage by Hamas. The film harshly criticizes the Israeli government for the fact that the terrorist attack happened, but at the same time it is not at all against the war in Gaza. Therefore, the leadership of the Toronto International Film Festival, fearing a scandal, excluded him from the program. And then they returned it, because the scandal broke out anyway. During the premiere, both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations took place at the cinema, and the film eventually won the Audience Award.

Finally, the main Israeli film about this war is "Yes" by the country's most influential director Nadav Lapid. It premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and it was a film that was either for or against. This is a story about an artist trapped in a trap. Around him, the Israeli elite is becoming more and more militarized, while not forgetting to arrange lavish parties, where the main character and his wife are invited to entertain the audience. Since he is an outstanding musician, he is commissioned to make a new version of the Israeli national anthem, which will glorify the war. And everything seems to be right, and the characters are watching the terrible October 7 videos over and over again, but for some reason they can't merge with the generals, politicians and businessmen in a general ecstasy. And the hero goes to the border with Gaza, perhaps to find the answer there.

Nadav Lapid was criticized a lot and bitterly — first after the screening in Cannes, then six months later, when the film was released in Israel. And since this work is not fundamentally "partisan," most of the film critics and, oddly enough, the audience, who well understood the hopelessness of the situation of the main character, society, and the country, stood up for it.

"Once upon a Time in Gaza" is just the tip of a large cinematic iceberg that has grown since October 7th. And it seems that watching this movie without seeing the rest would not be quite right. But you also need to start somewhere.