‘You Dropped Our Film’: Makers of Documentary on Killing of Doctors by Israel in Gaza Slam BBC After BAFTA Win
New Delhi: Nearly a year after it was shelved by the BBC over what it had termed as “impartiality concerns”, the documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack has won the BAFTA award for current affairs, with its makers slamming the broadcasting giant in their acceptance speech.
“Thank you judges, thank you BAFTA. This award means so much to us. Israel has killed over 47,000 children and women in Gaza so far. Israel has bombed and targeted every single one of Gaza's hospitals. It's killed over 1,700 Palestinian doctors and healthcare workers. It has imprisoned over 400 in what the UN now calls a medicide. These are the findings of our investigation that the BBC paid for but refused to show,” said journalist Ramita Navia, while accepting the award on May 10, resulting in applause from the audience.
Ben de Pear, the executive producer of the documentary, thanked the journalists behind the film before taking a jibe at the BBC, which aired the BAFTA ceremony on BBC One with a delay of more than two hours.
“Finally, just a question for the BBC: Given you dropped our film, will you drop us from the Bafta screening later tonight?” asked de Pear, reported Al Jazeera.
After the BAFTA win, de Pear also praised Gazan journalists Jaber Badwan and Osana Al Ashi, who contributed footage to the documentary, highlighting their resilience and crediting them for the risks they took to help them.
The award-winning documentary, originally commissioned by BBC, features firsthand accounts from Palestinian health workers on the frontline. It exposes systematic attacks on hospitals and describes incidents pertaining to killings and torture of healthcare workers by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) during the Gaza war.
For instance, it opens with the footage recovered from the phone of a Palestinian medic killed under intense Israeli gunfire, immediately placing Israel’s targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system at the centre of the narrative.
According to a Middle East Eye report, the documentary directly challenges longstanding narratives used to justify attacks on hospitals in Gaza, which have been widely condemned by rights groups as violations of international law.
Originally scheduled to be shown in February last year, the documentary was delayed while the BBC said it was investigating another programme, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. Later, in June 2025, the BBC announced that, following a review, it had decided not to show the film due to concerns that it may create “a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect”.
Deborah Turness, then head of news and current affairs in BBC pointed to alleged social media activity by one of the journalists involved and criticised Navai’s language in a radio interview as “not compatible with the BBC’s standards of impartiality.”
A report by the Centre for Media Monitoring in the United Kingdom, which works to ensure unbiased and accurate reporting on Islam and Muslims, finds an extreme media bias towards Israel in reporting on Palestinian fatalities by the UK’s public service broadcaster, the BBC, a name held in high regard worldwide and especially in India.
This bias, the report illustrates, is expressed through omission, passive language when Israel is responsible, glaring editorial choices and the removal of context, The Wire had previously reported.
The remarks of the documentary’s makers only underscore the growing accusations that the BBC has systematically sidelined and censored Palestinian voices while amplifying Israeli narratives during the war on Gaza, prompting widespread criticism from campaigners, journalists and public figures.
Earlier, more than 600 industry insiders, including Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon, had written an open letter to Tim Davie, the BBC’s then director general, demanding the immediate release of the documentary, The National News had reported. The documentary was subsequently acquired and broadcast by Channel 4 on July 2, 2025.
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