Gaza to Oscar / The Virgin and Child

GAZA TO OSCAR, directed by Alaa Damo, is a documentary essay on cinema as a survival strategy and a medium of geopolitical visibility. The film operates on two levels: as an intimate portrait of a filmmaker caught in the tension of global attention, and simultaneously as a structural reflection on festival circuits, price economies, and the symbolic capital of international recognition.

Damo interweaves observational footage with self-reflective commentary on production conditions, restricted mobility, and the infrastructural precariousness of filmmaking under siege. The result is a multifaceted portrayal of artistic practice under political pressure. Ultimately, GAZA TO OSCAR explores questions of representation, cultural circulation, and the ambivalent promise of global recognition within profoundly asymmetrical power structures.


Damo interweaves observational footage with self-reflective commentary on production conditions, restricted mobility, and the infrastructural precariousness of filmmaking under siege. Artist Talk with Alaa Damo to follow the screening

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD is an uncompromising feature film drama that follows Avesta – a young Kurdish-Yezidi woman and survivor of the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS). Her life is violently shattered when she is kidnapped and sold as a sex slave to the Belgian jihadist Mohamed Redouane. After becoming pregnant, she manages to escape; eventually, as a refugee, she reaches Brussels, driven by a clear goal: to bring the man who enslaved her to justice. She doesn't want the child conceived through violence, yet she gives birth to it as living proof of the crime committed against her.

Formally, the film adheres to a strict direct cinema aesthetic. It eschews melodramatic exaggeration in favor of precise observation, formal restraint, and emotional intimacy. Trauma is not explicitly displayed, but unfolds through duration, silence, and repetition—through Avesta's physical presence and everyday gestures.

On a sociological level, the film situates the individual story within the systematic exploitation of female bodies by ISIS, particularly of Yazidi women. Their enslavement functioned both as an instrument of ideological terror and as an economic strategy. By focusing on the aftereffects of this violence—its legal, physical, and psychological consequences—the film exposes structural conditions that continue to marginalize survivors long after their escape.