Neon Joins Gaza Documentary NAZA as Its US Box Office Passes $700,000
Distributor Neon has joined the team behind NAZA, a documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, to help the film reach more cinemas and more viewers. Deadline reported the deal on 21 October 2026.
Neon is joining The Guardian, the film's producer; MK2 Films, its sales company; producer James Wilson; and executive producer Jonathan Glazer. A distributor is the company that books a film into cinemas and handles its release. MK2 Films had signed on to sell the film to buyers before its festival debut, and it negotiated the Neon deal with Neon itself. No financial terms have been made public.
The film is built around secret conversations held on rooftops in Tel Aviv at night. The people speaking are those who designed and ran the systems behind Israel's killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to Variety. The title is a Hebrew phrase, nezek agavi, meaning "collateral damage", and Variety reports that the film is the only documentary to have played in competition at the Venice Film Festival.
It premiered there, won the Special Jury Prize and received a standing ovation that lasted twenty-five minutes. It later screened at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where it won the audience award, and at the New York Film Festival. It also won the Critics Prize at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.
The film opened in the United States on 30 September 2026, released independently in 85 theatres across 30 cities. By the time the Neon deal was announced, it had grossed more than $700,000 in US theatres, according to Variety. Deadline reported earlier that the directors had pursued a self-distribution model for that release. The film has theatrical distribution in more than 50 countries outside the US.
Neon called NAZA one of the best films of the year. It compared the film to Laura Poitras's Citizenfour and Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. The company did not give a release plan for the wider rollout.
Abraham and Szor co-directed No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary made with a group of collaborators. NAZA is also nominated for three Critics Choice Documentary Awards, including Best Documentary, Best Director(s) and Best Political Documentary, and it appears on the DOC NYC Short List.
Glazer, who executive-produced the film, spoke to The Guardian on 16 October. He said he was "shocked into silence" by the film and described Israel's response to it as more venal than he had expected.
For audiences, the next step is the wider footprint Neon promised. The film's journey from a sales pitch to a major distributor has taken a little under three months from its Venice premiere.
