Gaza Documentary Set to Premiere at Venice Film Festival

A new documentary titled NAZA, directed by filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning Israeli-Palestinian production No Other Land, will premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month, organisers announced on Monday.

Competing for the prestigious Golden Lion award, the documentary examines "the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza," according to a synopsis released on the festival website.

The film is directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four co-directors of No Other Land, which chronicles Palestinian activists resisting the Israeli military's demolition of villages in the occupied West Bank.

NAZA is produced by The Guardian alongside James Wilson (JW Films), with Jonathan Glazer serving as executive producer. Wilson and Glazer previously produced the Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, which centers on the Auschwitz concentration camp.

According to The Guardian, NAZA refers to "an Israeli military acronym used euphemistically by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that it expects will be killed in an airstrike."

The screening will take place on September 10, attended by the directors, producers, Guardian journalists, and the official delegation.

It stands as the sole documentary among the 21 feature films in competition for the Golden Lion Award at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

The background of the regional conflict includes the October 7, 2023 attack launched by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data, along with the abduction of 251 hostages into Gaza.

Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people, according to the territory’s health ministry—an organization operating under Hamas authority whose statistics are regarded as reliable by the United Nations.

While a ceasefire was established in October, efforts toward a permanent resolution to the war have stalled, with Israeli forces currently maintaining control over nearly 70 percent of the territory.