Michael Winterbottom, Mohammed Sawwaf now filming ‘Gaza Year Zero' in Palestine

UK director Michael Winterbottom and Mohammed Sawwaf have started filming the drama Gaza Year Zero in the Gaza Strip in Palestine, reteaming after Eleven Days in May.

Sawwaf and his team are filming in Gaza while Winterbottom is co-directing and editing from London.

Le Pacte has boarded world sales and French distribution and will be launching the film with a first treatment and stills at EFM.

The fiction film tells the story of a 13-year-old boy and his family as they try to survive in a country destroyed by war. The film draws on the experiences of Sawwaf and his team who have been working in Gaza all through the war.

Winterbottom won the Berlin Golden Bear for In This World in 2003, a docu-drama about the journey from Pakistan to London of two refugees from Afghanistan.

The UK-Palestine co-production between Revolution Films and Gaza-based Alef Multimedia is produced by Hashim Alsaraf and Ben Pearce and executive produced by Melissa Parmenter.

Winterbottom and Sawwaf’s 2022 documentary Eleven Days In May focused on the families of children killed in Gaza during the ongoing conflict with Israel.

This story originally appeared on our sister site Screen