Venice Adds Gaza Documentary 'Naza' to Competition Lineup
The Venice Film Festival has added Naza, a documentary from filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, to its main competition lineup, La Biennale di Venezia announced on 24 August 2026. The film will have its world premiere on 10 September, during the festival's 83rd edition running 2–12 September.
Naza is the only feature documentary selected for competition at Venice this year. Abraham and Szor are two of the four co-directors of No Other Land, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2025. La Biennale di Venezia
According to the producers, the title comes from a military acronym euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike. The film claims to reveal in detail "the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza," building on reporting first published by +972 Magazine, Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian between 2023 and 2025. The Hollywood Reporter
The production credits are notable. Naza was produced by The Guardian and James Wilson at JW Films, in association with Placeholder Films and Unseen Hand. Jonathan Glazer — whose own film The Zone of Interest won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023 — serves as executive producer. Deadline, which described the documentary as "hot-button," reported that its synopsis opens with the line "Shot at night…" Deadline
The Venice competition lineup is typically dominated by narrative features, making a documentary addition a rare programming choice. Last-minute additions to a festival's main competition are themselves uncommon; the announcement comes just nine days before the festival opens.
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival runs 2–12 September on the Lido. Naza screens in competition on 10 September.
