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Now more than ever, there is little room in our attention for anything but the people enduring displacement and especially those in Gaza. Regardless of all else, they remain resilient, with roots that run deep into a land they cannot be separated from even in the diaspora. That makes it all the more important to represent them on screen, so their stories are not forgotten.
Bringing this sentiment to life is Nicolas Wadimoff, the Geneva-based Swiss filmmaker behind Who Is Still Alive, a documentary built from the testimonies of nine Palestinians who fled Gaza. Switzerland has selected the film as its official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.
Originally released in French as Qui vit encore, the film contains no images of bombardment and no archival footage. Its focus is the personal narratives of survivors, the human stories too often reduced to headlines, statistics, and political rhetoric. The nine recount their lives before the war, their harrowing escape, and their resilience and hope.
The displaced Palestinians featured are Jawdat Khoudary, Mahmoud Jouda, Adel Al-Taweel, Haneen Harara, Malak Khadra, Hana Eleiwa, Feras Elshrafi, Eman Shannan and Ghada Alabadla. In the film, each traces the outlines of Gaza’s cities and neighbourhoods in white on the floor, recounting their lives around the map. The documentary was filmed in South Africa, one of the few countries Palestinians from Gaza can enter without a visa.
In his director’s statement, Wadimoff said: “What the survivors of Gaza have endured cannot be told with words alone. Gestures, breaths, or silences can be more telling, sometimes.” His vision, he added, was to “give visibility to the stories of a people too often dehumanised, reduced to numbers.”
On the Oscar entry, Wadimoff said: “Representing Switzerland at the Oscars with our film Qui Vit Encore (Who is Still Alive) is a great honour that fills us with joy. At the same time, it is a great responsibility to make the bodies and voices of the film’s protagonists visible and audible – all of them survivors of the hell of Gaza who were confronted with the unspeakable, yet remain alive and standing tall.” He continued: “It is also an opportunity to loudly and clearly champion the values that have made Switzerland what it should continue to be: a country of humanism and humanity, of dialogue, and of respect for others. We will do our best to live up to this selection.”
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2025 at a special event in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar. Since its debut, the documentary won the Prix de Soleure earlier this year at the Solothurn Film Festival, one of Switzerland’s most prestigious film awards. The Academy is expected to announce its shortlist of 15 titles in December, with five nominees titled on Jan 21, 2027. The 99th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 14, 2027.
