Casablanca – Palestinian filmmaker Hosam Abu Dan’s debut fiction feature, “Thirteen in Gaza,” has won the NETPAC Award at the 51st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The film follows Raghad, a 13-year-old girl entering puberty, as she navigates life with her father after their home is destroyed in a bombing.
The two live in a crowded displacement camp, where Raghad struggles with grief, a lack of privacy, and the ordinary challenges of growing up, while her father tries to keep her safe.
Rather than focusing only on destruction, Abu Dan turns his camera toward the smaller details of everyday life. The film explores what happens when childhood, family, and ordinary routines continue against the backdrop of war.
A story made in Gaza
“Thirteen in Gaza” carries another important distinction. Abu Dan filmed the entire feature inside Gaza, working with a local Palestinian cast and crew under wartime conditions.
The film marks the first fiction feature shot entirely in the territory in 12 years.
The cast includes Mary Ziyara as Raghad, alongside Feras Al Masri, Ghassan Salem, and Nawaf Abu Amra.
Abu Dan’s feature premiered at TIFF as part of the Centrepiece program, where it brought a deeply personal story from Gaza to an international festival audience.
About the NEPTAC Award
The NETPAC Award comes from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, an organization that promotes Asian cinema and supports recognition of filmmakers from the region.
At TIFF, the award recognizes an outstanding Asian feature by a “first- or second-time feature director.”
The 2026 NETPAC jury, chaired by Mara Matta alongside Richard Fung and Panagiotis Kotzathanasis, praised Abu Dan’s approach to the story.
“Against unfolding genocide, Thirteen in Gaza by Hosam Abu Dan turns suffering into neither spectacle nor victimhood, but into riveting images of life in all its complexity,” the jury said.
For Abu Dan, the film also represents an attempt to tell a story from inside Gaza, through the experiences of people who live there. Speaking to Reuters, he said telling a story “your way, in your own language” carries a different weight.
With its Toronto win, “Thirteen in Gaza” adds another international milestone to a film made under extraordinary circumstances, while putting a young Palestinian girl and her everyday life at the center of the story.
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