Bisan Owda

Bisan Owda, a filmmaker and activist from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, worked on gender-equality initiatives with the United Nations and produced the Roya TV storytelling show Hakawatia before the war. When Israel’s bombardment began in October 2023, her own home was bombed and she fled south with her family — and kept filming. Opening each dispatch with the words “It’s Bisan from Gaza, and I’m still alive,” she documented displacement camps, hungry children and shattered neighborhoods in a video series produced with AJ+ that reached more than 40 million viewers, according to the network.

In May 2024, “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” won a Peabody Award, which cited her reports for vividly documenting “the Palestinian civilian experience under Israeli siege.” That September, the series won the Emmy for Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form, after the Television Academy rejected a campaign by a pro-Israel group to rescind her nomination. Accepting the award on her behalf, AJ+ senior executive producer Jon Laurence called it “testimony to the power of one woman, armed only with an iPhone, who survived almost a year of bombardment.”

Sources

• It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive — The Peabody Awards
• Palestinian Journalist Bisan Owda Wins News Emmy After Campaign to Get Nomination Rescinded — The Wrap