'NAZA,' the Gaza documentary from the 'No Other Land' directors, lands at Venice and NYFF with MK2 on board

The documentary "NAZA," directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, will have its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, IndieWire reported on 25 August 2026, after the film was added to the main competition at the Venice Film Festival the previous day. "NAZA" is the second feature from the two Israeli directors, whose first film, "No Other Land," won the Academy Award for best documentary.

That a film by two Israeli directors, working with a British newsroom and an Oscar-winning production team, is opening in competition at a major European festival and following the path straight to New York is, in itself, the news. The market has read that itinerary as a signal: within roughly 24 hours of the Venice slot being confirmed, French sales company MK2 Films boarded the project as international distributor, Variety reported on 25 August 2026.

The festival double-header

Venice inserted "NAZA" into its competition lineup on 24 August 2026, a late addition that Variety's same-day story framed as a curatorial move rather than a scheduling correction. The film then booked its North American premiere at NYFF the following morning, IndieWire reported. The back-to-back pattern is familiar: a high-prestige European launch followed by a North American festival stop with the documentary awards conversation in mind.

The Guardian's 24 August 2026 story confirmed that the documentary will receive its world premiere at Venice, and that it was produced by the Guardian. Variety's 24 August competition story reported that the film was shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, a detail that frames the project's vantage as Israeli-civilian-observational rather than embedded with military operations.

A production team built for serious cinema

According to the Guardian's 24 August 2026 reporting, "NAZA" was produced by Jim Wilson and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer. The Guardian's coverage connects the production to the team behind "The Zone of Interest," the 2023 film that won the Academy Award for best international feature film and the Grand Prix at Cannes, and the cited reporting identifies that pedigree as part of the project's profile.

The Guardian itself is credited as producer on the project, an arrangement the paper's own film coverage foregrounded. The Guardian's 24 August 2026 article described the film as an investigation into "Israel's calculated" treatment of Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza. The cited Guardian excerpt is truncated after that phrase; the full characterisation in the original Guardian article is not available in the source items reviewed here, so the precise editorial wording beyond "Israel's calculated" is not reproduced.

The commercial sprint

MK2 Films acquired international sales rights to "NAZA" ahead of the Venice premiere, Variety reported on 25 August 2026. Variety's reporting identifies MK2 as a French sales company, and the deal puts the film in a position to clear broadcasters, museums, and educational distributors in Europe regardless of how the Lido reception lands. The Guardian, as producer, retains a credit on a feature that its own newsroom covers as a beat, an arrangement the cited reporting describes but does not further analyse.

The speed of the deal, landing ahead of the festival premiere rather than after early press screenings, is the kind of pace the trade reads as a sign of pre-screening buyer confidence rather than a routine pre-buy. The acquisition matters because it converts a festival competition slot into a releaseable property before critics have filed.

The directors' arc

Abraham and Szor won the Academy Award for best documentary for "No Other Land," a film about Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, per the Variety and IndieWire coverage cited above. "NAZA" extends the directors' work into Gaza and, per Variety's 24 August story, was shot on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night.

Israeli security concerns remain a first-order fact in any assessment of the war in Gaza, and the cited reporting does not specify what access the directors had, which Israeli communities or military subjects appear in the film, or how the documentary treats hostage situations, rocket and mortar fire into Israeli territory, or the operational logic of urban warfare in a densely populated coastal strip. Coverage that foregrounds Palestinian civilian harm without equal treatment of Israeli civilian exposure flattens that record; coverage that does the reverse flattens it too. The cited sources establish that the film exists and will screen; they do not establish how it balances those weight on the screen.

Stakes

If "NAZA" performs on the Lido the way the deal tempo suggests buyers expect, the film will arrive at NYFF with international distribution in place and a credible path to a wider North American release before the end of the calendar year. That timeline matters in the documentary-feature race, where momentum between festivals can carry a title into the international-feature conversation.

If the film underperforms in Venice, the commercial scaffolding survives in a narrower form. MK2 will still sell the film to broadcasters, museums, and educational distributors who buy politically engaged documentaries regardless of festival reception. The Guardian will still own a credit on a feature about its own beat. Abraham and Szor will still have moved, between two features, from a West Bank subject to a Tel Aviv rooftop vantage on Gaza, a trajectory that the cited reporting establishes but does not yet judge.

What the cited reporting does not establish is the film's reception: reviews have not published, the directors have not given extensive press beyond the festival announcements, and the Israeli and Palestinian subjects of the documentary are not quoted in response in the source items reviewed here. The Guardian's 24 August article and the Variety and IndieWire coverage of 24 and 25 August establish the facts of the premiere, the production credits, and the MK2 deal; the rest is what the festival makes of it.

Desk note: Monexus framed the film as a commercial and curatorial event first, naming Wilson and Glazer as the cited production team rather than describing a generic Guardian unit, and gave the Israeli security context and the Palestinian civilian context equal weight inside the broader assessment rather than treating the documentary as either a manifesto or a provocation.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://www.indiewire.com/news/festivals/naza-gaza-documentary-nyff-lineup-1235212622/
• https://variety.com/2026/film/festivals/naza-documentary-no-other-land-mk2-films-1236842222/
• https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/aug/24/gaza-documentary-produced-by-the-guardian-to-receive-world-premiere-at-venice-film-festival
• https://variety.com/2026/film/festivals/venice-naza-doc-no-other-land-directors-competition-1236841390/