In the summer of 2023, the London-based Palestinian filmmaker Yousef Alhelou travelled to Gaza with a simple mission to capture the vibrant pulse of a place that has long been off-limits to the world.

What he did not know was that his footage would soon become an unintentional obituary. 

The Phoenix of Gaza, a 48-minute documentary, was filmed just months before Israel launched what Alhelou now calls a “genocidal war” on the strip. 

Premiered in London in February 2025, the documentary stands as a hauntingly beautiful archive of a Gaza that no longer exists.

Over a period of two years, Israel dropped more than 85,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza, reducing the enclave to dust. Alhelou’s film now serves as an archive, a memory, and a monument.

Through his lens, we witness a Gaza that was already a “Riviera of the Middle East,” a place of joy and defiance that Israel turned into a mass graveyard.

“We refused to vanish. We refused to give up,” he says. 

He shows us an authentic view of the place now touted as the “Riviera of the Middle East” in AI-generated videos. 

Gaza before annihilation

Shot in July and August 2023, The Phoenix of Gaza is breathtakingly beautiful.

The film opens in London. We see him in his London apartment, packing his bags, his voice brimming with anticipation as he prepares to return to Gaza after a decade away.

He calls his mother, who showers him with prayers for safe travels, while his 10-year-old son makes a quick appearance. 

“I wanted to show the world the life of Gazans, the daily life, the hustle and bustle,” he tells TRT World.

Little did Alhelou know that this footage, shot in July and August of 2023, would become a historical artefact, the last unvarnished portrait of Gaza before its annihilation at the hands of Israeli forces.

Through sweeping drone shots, we see a city that defies its 20-year siege.

Clean roads hum with smooth traffic, high-rise buildings adorned with solar panels, born of necessity after Israel bombed Gaza’s only power plant in 2006.

Greenbelts and trees dot the urban sprawl, while public parks appear full of families lounging on picnic chairs, children playing, and people strolling along the pristine Mediterranean beach.

“We managed to beautify and decorate our prison of Gaza,” Alhelou says, emphasising the resilience of a people who transformed a “high-density concentration camp” into a vibrant urban centre.

The beach is crowded, the water clear. Palestinian flags flutter as water-skiers speed by. The imagery defies the narrative of Gaza as a place of only suffering.

His approach is unpretentious: he walks through markets, parks, streets. He chats with shopkeepers, children, and the elderly.

At a public square, a phoenix statue, which is the emblem of Gaza’s municipality, stands as a symbol of rebirth, a motif that resonates throughout the documentary.

He takes us to the ancient gold market, its shopfronts full of jewellery, and the 1,400-year-old Great Omari Mosque, a UNESCO-protected site, later reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs.

On Omar al-Mukhtar Street, named after the famed Libyan anti-colonial warrior, restaurants and shops appear full of customers, scenes now unimaginable as the street currently lies in ruins.

In the Shujayyah neighbourhood of Alhelou’s childhood, children roam the same streets that he did in the 1980s, unaware that many would soon perish in Israel’s indiscriminate bombings.

He films the 700-year-old Pasha Palace, where Napoleon once slept for three nights, and the Church of Saint Porphyrius, built in 1160, both destroyed by Israeli bombs.

He explores beachside cafes and Gaza’s culinary scene by hopping to the roadside food stands. He visits the Ottoman Hamam, a space for relaxation, near the historic Jewish neighbourhood, which predated the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The documentary highlights the educational achievements in Gaza, a place that has one of the world’s highest literacy rates on a per capita basis.

Scenes of cultural events – music, art, and a wedding ceremony – capture the “heartbeat of Gaza”, while a student appreciation ceremony celebrates young graduates with song and dance.

Even Gaza’s cemeteries tell a story. Alhelou lingers in the English cemetery, where 3,500 graves of World War I soldiers are meticulously kept, a gesture of dignity, in sharp contrast to the thousands of Palestinians now buried beneath collapsed buildings.

Elegy for family under rubble

He left Gaza in late August 2023. The war’s toll is personal.

“This genocidal war impacted me in the sense that I cannot believe that my city, the place of my birth, has been destroyed and that it’s beyond recognition,” he says.

Alhelou's eldest sister, Asma, and her seven children were killed in Israeli strikes and are still buried under the rubble. His elderly parents and siblings remain in Gaza, fighting a daily battle for survival amid Israel-imposed starvation. 

The documentary, initially intended for his Arabic-speaking followers, has taken the shape of an elegy meant “to keep the memory and the legacy of Gaza for generations to come.”

The contrast between Gaza then and now is gut-wrenching. Where once there were vibrant markets, there is now rubble. Where children played, there are now craters. 

The Riviera of Gaza, which Alhelou compares to Singapore and Dubai, is gone. It has been replaced by a landscape where “there is no infrastructure, no electricity, no water, no food, no places to visit”.

The “man-made starvation” orchestrated by Israel is particularly harrowing. “I cannot believe that we are facing starvation in the 21st century,” Alhelou says.