A new documentary from the Israeli directors behind the Oscar-winning No Other Land is heading to Venice — and it may be the most politically charged film of the festival season. NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, has been acquired by French sales company MK2 Films and will premiere in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival on September 10. [1]

What the Film Claims to Show

The documentary's title is itself a provocation. NAZA is described in promotional materials as a military acronym "euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that it expects will be killed in an airstrike." [1] The film purports to expose, in the directors' words, "the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza." [2]

Shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, the film draws on investigative reporting published between 2023 and 2025 by three outlets: the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian. [1] That last outlet is also a co-producer of the film, alongside James Wilson of JW Films. [2]

A High-Profile Production Team

The production pedigree behind NAZA is notable. Wilson and executive producer Jonathan Glazer are the Oscar-winning team responsible for The Zone of Interest, the 2023 film about a Nazi death camp commandant's domestic life that won Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. [1] Glazer's involvement in a documentary scrutinizing Israeli military conduct adds another layer of cultural weight to a project already guaranteed to generate controversy.

NAZA is the only documentary feature competing in Venice's main competition lineup this year — a distinction that elevates its profile considerably in a festival known for premiering prestige cinema. [1]

The Directors' Track Record

Abraham and Szor are two of the four co-directors of No Other Land, which documented the Israeli military's demolition of Palestinian homes and villages in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank. [1] That film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024, where it won best documentary, before going on to win the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2025. [2]

The film's path to audiences was not straightforward. No Other Land struggled to secure a traditional U.S. distributor and ultimately self-released in a rollout coordinated by Cinetic Media and Michael Tuckman Media. [2] The other two co-directors of No Other Land — Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal — are Palestinian; they are not involved in NAZA. [1]

MK2's Acquisition Rationale

MK2 CEO Nathanaël Karmitz and managing director Fionnuala Jamison framed their acquisition in terms of both artistic and civic purpose. "Beyond the power of its testimonies and the rigor of its journalistic approach," they said in a joint statement, "the film by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor struck us for the cinematic excellence of its form. The intelligence of its direction resonates deeply with MK2's history as a film company whose mission has always included giving audiences, through cinema, the keys and tools to confront the truth of the world we live in, however difficult that truth may be." [1]

The statement positions MK2 — a company with a long history of distributing politically engaged cinema — as a deliberate champion of the film's difficult subject matter, not merely its commercial prospects.

What Comes Next

NAZA is a Guardian production with JW Films, in association with Placeholder Films and Unseen Hand. [1] The 83rd Venice Film Festival runs from September 2 to 12, with the NAZA premiere scheduled for September 10. [1]

Given No Other Land's tortured journey to U.S. screens despite its eventual Oscar win, the central question now is whether NAZA will face similar distribution resistance — or whether the combination of Venice competition status, a major French sales company, and the directors' newly elevated profile will smooth the road. The film's explicit claims about Israeli military targeting doctrine are certain to draw fierce responses from multiple directions before a single ticket is sold.