‘Citizen Osama’ turns life under bombardment into urgent, intimate cinema
Davide Abbatescianni writes in Mondweiss on 11 October 2026:
At barely 70 minutes, Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama feels much larger than its running time. Not because it drags, but because of how much life, death and uncertainty it compresses into a short span. Events arrive with the relentlessness of a permanent emergency. Buildings are bombed, people are pulled from rubble, colleagues are killed, food becomes harder to find, and humanitarian aid appears only to prove painfully insufficient. Between these episodes, Osama Al-Ashi goes home to his wife, his young child and his anxious parents.
The result is a film in which public catastrophe and private life can no longer be separated.
That perspective gives Citizen Osama a striking place beside NAZA, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s documentary, which has recently drawn significant international attention. Where NAZA examines Israeli military systems through testimony from Israeli personnel, Hassouna remains on the ground with those living beneath their consequences. The films approach the same historical moment from radically different positions.
Premiering in Venice Open at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Citizen Osama follows Al-Ashi, once an artistic photographer and now a war documentarian living in northern Gaza.
Hassouna shot the film himself; Denis Le Paven edited it, while Rasmus Steen composed its restrained score. The documentary has also been selected as Palestine’s submission for the 2027 Academy Awards.
There is little distance here between journalism and filmmaking.