"NAZA," the documentary everyone was talking about at Venice, tackling Israel's collateral damage plans in Gaza, has decided not to wait for a distributor — which the filmmakers knew full well might never come.
Instead, a US theatrical rollout is starting Sept. 30 in NYC, will expand to Los Angeles and other markets on Oct. 9 and then roll out nationally via an innovative plan that forgoes selling the film to a studio or independent distributor.
The rollout, which kicks off exclusively at the IFC Center in New York City, is "spearheaded by The Guardian and mk2, who have assembled a team of U.S. and international partners and consultants to bring the film to audiences as quickly as possible," according to a release.
A few weeks after the Venice lineup had been revealed, I reported about a mysterious film that would be added to the competition, and was being withheld for "security reasons." "NAZA" was that film. It ended up getting a 24.5-minute standing ovation — the longest in the festival's history — and went on to win the Special Jury Prize, plus rave reviews: 96 on Metacritic.
In the doc, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor interviewed 24 people whose faces and voices were digitally altered to protect their identities, many of them Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers, who describe the purported use of AI-powered targeting systems in Gaza that they say killed Palestinian civilians.
Israel's military, the IDF, says the anonymous sources in the documentary "cannot be verified," and that the allegations are "categorically false." Its main argument is that the film rests on testimony from people whose identities, service records, and involvement can't be confirmed, and that some claims concern strategy "clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers." The IDF called the film's claim that a strike was approved with up to 500 expected civilian deaths "completely false."
Abraham and Szor previously shared a 2025 Oscar for "No Other Land," about Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, which they co-directed with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. They will be back in the Oscar race this year with "NAZA," which, much like their last film, will have to go the self-distribution route.
The film will star Hugh Jackman, while Hugh Grant and Owen Cooper are circling roles. Jack Thorne, who is red-hot, thanks to his acclaimed Netflix series’ "Adolescence” and “Lord of the Flies,” wrote the script.