‘Naza,’ the Guardian-produced Gaza film from the ‘No Other Land’ directors, lands at Venice with French distribution on board

The Venice Film Festival slipped a new documentary into its competition lineup on 24 August 2026, and within twenty-four hours it had a French distribution partner lined up. MK2 Films, the Paris-based sales company, boarded “Naza,” the latest feature from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Israeli co-directors whose 2024 film “No Other Land” won the Berlinale’s documentary award before becoming a global cause in the culture pages.

The festival’s late addition of the film, paired with the speed of MK2’s pickup, gives a project born out of one of the most contested conflicts of the decade a wider runway than its makers could plausibly have expected a week ago. It also lands in a year when the politics of who gets to show what, and where, are being litigated as loudly as the films themselves.

A last-minute slot, and a Guardian credit

Venice added “Naza” to its competition roster on 24 August 2026, with a world premiere scheduled for the festival’s opening days, Variety reported. The Guardian, which is credited as a producer on the film, said its reporters had worked on the project and would publish accompanying journalism to coincide with the premiere. The film investigates what its makers describe as Israel’s “calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians” during the war in Gaza, according to the Guardian’s 24 August report.

The timing is unusual. Competition slots at the major European festivals are typically locked in weeks, sometimes months, ahead of the press conferences that announce the lineup. A 24 August addition, with the festival due to open in early September, signals a deliberate curatorial choice rather than a scheduling fix.

A second feature from a first-time Oscar winner

Abraham and Szor came to international attention with “No Other Land,” which they made with Palestinian co-directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. The film won the Berlinale’s best documentary award in February 2024 and went on to win the Academy Award for best documentary feature in March 2025. It chronicled the demolition of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank.

“Naza,” by contrast, is built around reporting from inside Gaza. The Guardian’s 24 August piece describes it as an investigation rather than a companion piece. Variety’s same-day report frames the film as a continuation of the directors’ documentary practice, now extended to the war that began after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks.

MK2’s pickup, announced on 25 August, gives the film a sales and distribution infrastructure across France and, through MK2’s relationships at other European festivals and broadcasters, a credible path to theatrical release in continental Europe. The company has a track record of handling politically charged international cinema.

The festival as a contested stage

European film festivals have spent the last two years negotiating the politics of their competitions. Cannes 2024 opened with a procession of industry figures in red pins; Venice 2024 was dominated by debate over whether “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, was a political film or simply a drama with politics in its margins. The 2025 editions were quieter on the surface but sharper underneath, with documentaries on Gaza and on Ukrainian civilians under occupation drawing both attention and protest.

“Naza” sits inside that pattern. It is a film made by Israeli directors about an Israeli military campaign, financed in part by a British newspaper, sold by a French company, premiering in Italy, with the United States as its largest single theatrical market by default. The provenance is unusual: a major British outlet is named as producer, not merely reporter. That places editorial weight on the film that an outside-the-newsroom production would not carry.

Stakes, and what remains uncertain

The most natural reading of the last week’s news is that the directors’ prior success bought them goodwill at a moment when the festival, the sales company, and the producing outlet each had reasons to move quickly. Venice gets a competition film with built-in global press. MK2 gets a title with documented audience demand. The Guardian gets a credit line on a documentary whose subject the paper has covered extensively. Each party’s incentive aligns with the others’.

The sources do not specify the film’s running time, its festival screening schedule beyond the premiere, or the territories covered by the MK2 deal. The Guardian’s 24 August report does not name the Guardian journalists who worked on the film or specify how the outlet’s editorial control over the journalism is delineated from the film-makers’ control over the documentary. Variety’s 25 August report frames the MK2 deal as freshly struck but does not disclose financial terms. Each of those gaps is normal for a project at this stage, and each is a question the festival circuit will answer over the next two weeks.

The harder question, and the one the sources do not attempt, is whether a film produced inside one of the world’s most surveilled conflicts can travel through European and American distribution without the politics of the subject crowding out the craft of the film. “No Other Land” answered that question by winning an Oscar. “Naza” will answer it again, on a stage its makers did not choose and cannot fully control.

Monexus framed this against the festival-as-arena pattern rather than as a film review: the piece tracks the distribution architecture and the curatorial decision, and treats the directors’ own political framing as part of the news rather than as editorial opinion.

Wire provenance

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

• 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/