VENICE — An apartment building has just collapsed in an Israeli airstrike, hundreds are likely dead, and a cameraman runs towards the smoke and rubble in the opening scene of the Gaza documentary Citizen Osama.

Palestinian director Ahmed Hassouna’s film is one of several at the Venice Film Festival this year about journalism, whether the high stakes faced by war correspondents, or the morally ambiguous methods used by certain media to gain viewers.

Citizen Osama, chosen as the Palestinian entry to compete for best foreign film in the 2027 Academy Awards, lays bare the life of a Palestinian journalist “who suffers just like anyone else” in Gaza, said its director Hassouna.

“A journalist is not a soulless camera; he is a man struggling to find water, fighting to obtain food and constantly worrying about how to find milk for his newborn baby or how to feed his wife so she can breastfeed their child,” Hassouna wrote in the film’s liner notes.

The documentary powerfully captures the apocalyptic landscape of Gaza City, its streets reduced to rubble and mangled rebar, and the weighty sense of responsibility shouldered by the few remaining journalists on the ground.

“I wanted to show that the journalist who captures suffering for the world is himself living through that same tragedy behind the lens,” wrote Hassouna, who remains in Gaza.

UN experts, rights groups and activists have accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian journalists, with the Committee to Protect Journalists counting more than 200 killed in Gaza since October 2023.

Citizen Osama covers the killing of Al-Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul in an Israeli airstrike in July 2024, an incident that was internationally condemned.

In 2025, days after a film about Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna was selected to play at the Cannes Film Festival, she was killed in an airstrike.

Foreign reporters are still blocked from entering Gaza by Israeli authorities – unless they are in tightly controlled tours organised by the military.