2026 Student Academy Awards Series Part 7: Gauze

Gauze, dirs. Noran Fikri Alezabi, Nicholas Arujah, Yulin Yue, Xinyue MA, Xiaonan Zhou

Continuing the impressive streak of Student Academy Awards finalists coming out of Gobelins in Paris - joining the ranks of The Shyness of Trees (bronze 2025), El Ombligo de la Luna (finalist 2024), Goodbye Jérôme! (finalist 2022), The Tree (finalist 2020) and The Ostrich Politic (finalist 2019) - is the animated short Gauze directed by Noran Fikri Alezabi, Nicholas Arujah, Xinyue Ma, Yulin Yue, and Xiaonan Zhou. Having already picked up a win back at the BAFTA Student Awards ceremony in July, it is standing out across its already impressive run.

The film is an adaptation inspired from real events in Palestine. It centers around 14 year old Zain who has had to give up his dreams of becoming a professional swimmer, as he finds himself in the position of role sole caregiver to his 6 year old brother Nour. With the backdrop of man made famine and war, Zain struggles to get food from the sparse and crowded aid drops. One day Nour spots some kites in the sky, and he wears down his brother enough to get him to agree to go and watch from the beach. While there the crowd becomes witness to an humanitarian delivery accidentally getting released over the ocean. Desperate for supplies, Zain decides to risk it all and runs towards the sea, convinced that his swimming background can give him the edge he needs. But the war torn sea turns out to be quite different from the stable environment of a swimming pool.

The animation style here sits somewhere between a comic book flattened look and the exaggerated features of manga characters, dialed back through the use of a bleak gray scale palette. This is backed by a soundtrack of equal gloom, with strings and piano playing a key role in framing the narrative. Juxtaposed with this is the childish optimism of Nour as he tells his stories with a youthful cheer despite the setting. The film also features some subtle sound effects which adds a bit of debt to certain scenes, like the humming of an air alarm that the boys seem unphased by or the water slash sea sounds as Zain swims in part off shore and in part through his own memories.

There is no point in sugar coating it, this is a bleak watch. An important watch for sure, but a tough one nonetheless. I have deep respect for the directors behind this in their relentless pursuit of staying true to this story. It would have been a lot easier to give this a silver lining or an upbeat twist, but I think this is the story we all need to see right now.

Gauze is currently publicly available to watch on Gobelins Youtube page here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsBa8HbMgh8

Review by Robin Hellgren