According to AP News, the Venice Film Festival has added "NAZA" — a documentary bearing witness to the civilian toll of the Israel-Hamas war — to its main competition, the only nonfiction work now contending for the Golden Lion. Directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by The Guardian alongside the filmmakers behind "The Zone of Interest," the film marks a charged return to the Lido for two of the four directors behind last year's Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land."
A nocturnal vantage
What we know of "NAZA" suggests a radical formal choice that should interest any viewer attuned to the visual grammar of witness. The film was shot at night on Tel Aviv rooftops, a vantage that transforms the urban landscape into both witness and silent accomplice to the violence unfolding beyond its skyline. According to the festival's synopsis, it focuses on the killings of Palestinian civilians, building on reporting published between 2023 and 2025 by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian. That the project emerges from a journalistic coalition rather than a single auteur signals something important about how documentary form is evolving to absorb a story that traditional narrative cinema has struggled, and often refused, to contain.
The weight of the competition
We see Venice once again placing its considerable prestige behind a film that demands uncomfortable viewing, and doing so with a directness that has become something of a festival signature. The 83rd edition, which opens Sept. 2 and announces its winners Sept. 12, is no stranger to geopolitical tension threading through its lineup. Last year saw Kaouther Ben Hania's "The Voice of Hind Rajab" — about the killing of a six-year-old Palestinian girl attempting to flee Gaza City with her family in early 2024 — claim the Silver Lion, while thousands gathered on the Lido for pro-Palestinian protests even as celebrities arrived for premieres. This year carries an unusual convergence: Ben Hania herself now sits on the Maggie Gyllenhaal-led jury that will decide the prizes, a position that will inevitably shape the conversation around any recognition "NAZA" might receive. Whether the film achieves the crossover path that carried "No Other Land" from festival discourse to the Academy Awards, or settles into the curated streaming ecosystem where so much documentary work now lives — as the latest premium OLED TV lineup reshapes how audiences experience prestige cinema at home — remains one of the more compelling questions of the autumn season.
What we will be watching for
The opening days will tell us much, and not only about the film itself. A Golden Lion nomination would position "NAZA" as something close to a thesis statement about nonfiction cinema's place in the contemporary canon, a programming decision that carries its own quiet argument about what the festival believes cinema should be asked to do. We will be watching how the press screenings unfold, whether the rooftop cinematography translates to the big screen with the intimacy its production method promises, and how a jury that includes a filmmaker who triumphed here only twelve months ago navigates a competition in which her previous success casts a long and unavoidable shadow. For now, the film exists as both provocation and promise — a document we have not yet seen, but one that Venice, in its fashion, has chosen to hold up to the light.