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NAZA, the Venice-winning documentary about the Israeli attacks on Gaza, is currently beating Marvel’s Avengers Endgame: Encore at the Italian box office.
Directed by Oscar-winners Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Israeli filmmakers behind No Other Land, NAZA shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis.
Shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv during the ongoing Gaza war, it features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers, soldiers and whistleblowers. They describe how Palestinians are targeted and how strikes are carried out using AI and automated surveillance in military targeting systems – despite Israel being aware that civilians are present in targeted areas. The participants’ faces and voices were digitally altered to protect their identities.
The 80-minute hot-button doc builds on reporting between 2023 and 2025 published by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian. It left this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Special Jury Prize and received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at the festival.
NAZA premiered in Italian cinemas on Monday (28 September) and by Tuesday, had taken a reported €1.1 million at the box office. By comparison, Avengers Endgame: Encore – a rerelease of the 2019 blockbuster featuring new scenes that tie the film to the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, made €356,000 over the same period (via The Guardian).
NAZA was originally booked for a three-day theatrical run but that’s now been extended due to sold-out screenings. More than 150 other cinemas in Italy are expected to extend programming.
“As long as theatres want to show it, NAZA will continue to be screened,” Andrea Romeo, founder of I Wonder Pictures, the film’s distributor in Italy, told La Repubblica.
“We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israelis to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible,” explained Abraham and Szor.
“While filming over the past three years, we found ourselves asking the very questions that were asked by our grandparents’ generation and throughout the 20th century: how does one group of people allow the total dehumanisation of another? What do the inner workings of such a system look like?”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasattacked the makers of NAZA, accusing the film of contributing to “global antisemitic incitement”.
“It’s shocking. We are fighting global antisemitic incitement and when it comes from within us it is intolerable,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on Telegram. “And now two Israeli directors portraying the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) as war criminals receive applause at the Venice festival.”
Netanyahu’s comments followed those of Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar, who directly equated criticism of Israel’s actions to antisemitism and announced that he would “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship” of the Israeli directing duo Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
NAZA will be released in more than 50 territories in the coming weeks before being made free-to-watch on The Guardian’s website in November.