EXCLUSIVE: MAD World, the film sales arm of Cairo-based MAD Solutions, has acquired worldwide sales rights to Palestinian drama Thirteen In Gaza ahead of its world premiere in Toronto’s Centrepiece section.
The film, the first fiction feature to be shot entirely in Gaza in 12 years, was filmed with a local Palestinian cast and crew under wartime conditions. It marks the feature directorial debut of Gaza-based filmmaker Hosam Abu Dan.
The story follows 13-year-old Raghad and her father after their home in Gaza is destroyed in a bombing. Living in a crowded displacement camp, Raghad has to deal with puberty, grief and the loss of privacy, while her father struggles to protect her amid poverty and worsening hardship. When he becomes involved with Khalil, a trader profiting from the wartime economy, survival forces him into difficult moral choices.
The cast is led by Mary Ziyara, Firas Al-Masri and Ghassan Salem alongside Abeer Ahmed and Nawaf Abu Amra.
The Palestine-Qatar film is also produced by director Abu Dan for New Scene for Media & Artistic Production and supported by the Doha Film Institute and the Arab Culture Fund (AFAC). Executive producer is Hanna Atallah.
The film’s screenplay is by Khalil Al-Muzayyen, with additional screenplay contributions from Hussein Al-Dash and Hosam Abu Dan. Yousef Mashharawi serves as director of photography and lighting.
“We made Thirteen In Gaza under some of the harshest conditions imaginable,” said Abu Dan. “I will never forget the fourth day of filming, when a bombing took place near our location and one of our colleagues was seriously injured. At that moment, I asked myself how we could continue making a film in a place like this, and how cinema could survive when its cost was so much pain.”
It marks the first time a fiction feature has been made in the city since Hany Abu-Assad’s The Idol in 2014.
Abu Dan said making his film was “a small miracle” as it was produced entirely under wartime conditions, facing displacement, limited movement, electricity interruptions, unstable communications, restricted access to equipment and shortages of essential resources. Despite these circumstances, it was completed with a local Palestinian cast and crew.
“Our dream was to see a fiction feature emerge from Gaza once again, after more than 12 years of absence,” he said. “Today, as the film heads to its world premiere in Toronto and begins its international journey with MAD, I feel that it has become more than a film we made in the midst of war. It is a testament to the resilience of cinema, and to its ability to carry Gaza’s voice from within Gaza to the world.”
A Palestinian director and producer from Gaza, Abu Dan has worked in film, television and media production since 2010 across editing, directing, cinematography, screenwriting and production. He founded New Scene for Media & Artistic Production in 2016 and has directed projects including Gaza Sound Man, a short documentary that premiered at Sheffield DocFest in 2025.
“Supporting and amplifying Palestinian filmmakers and their voices is an important part of our work, and we are proud to represent this film internationally,” said Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab, co-founders of MAD Solutions.
“Hosam Abu Dan has crafted a deeply intimate and powerful debut that captures the human consequences of war through a universal story of family, childhood and survival.”
MAD World’s sales slate also includes Palestinian drama Conversation With The Sea by Muayad Alayan, which will receive its North American premiere at Toronto after debuting at Venice.
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