NAZA, the Venice-Winning Gaza Documentary, Comes to Florence Cinemas
The documentary NAZA by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (who, together with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, also made No Other Land, the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary) comes to Italian movie theaters as a special event on September 28, 29 and 30, 2026, distributed by I Wonder Pictures.
Produced by the British daily The Guardian and JW Films, with Jonathan Glazer as executive producer, NAZA was the only documentary in competition at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, where it received a 24-minute standing ovation, an all-time record in the festival’s history, and the Special Jury Prize. It is an investigation, built on never-before-heard testimony, into the surveillance and intelligence systems and technologies behind the military operations in Gaza.
What the film is about
In secret conversations held in the dark on the rooftops of the Israeli capital, while the city below sleeps or lets loose in its famous nightlife, the mechanisms behind the mass extermination planned by the Israeli government against Palestinian civilians in Gaza are laid bare by the very people who designed them and carried them out under orders. The film gathers the testimony of 24 Israeli intelligence officers, soldiers and whistleblowers who describe in detail the mechanisms behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including the use of artificial intelligence to select targets.
The title “NAZA” comes from an Israeli military acronym, Nezek Agavi, which literally means “collateral damage”: it refers to the estimated or anticipated number of Palestinian civilians whose killing is considered acceptable or expected during an airstrike. The more important the target, the more “acceptable” a high number of civilian deaths becomes.
The directors in their own words
“We approached theaters in Israel and offered them the film for free, in the hope that it would be screened in the country alongside its theatrical release around the world,” Abraham wrote on X, noting that many inaccurate things have been said about the film and defending the “three years of in-depth journalistic investigation.”
The two directors hope NAZA can “spark a public debate about the government’s actions in Gaza, about the killing of more than 73,000 people, most of them civilians, about the normalization of a war of extermination, about the idea that there are no innocents.” As Abraham put it: “Twenty-four soldiers, men and women, stepped forward and spoke on camera about what an entire society does not want to talk about.”
As the directors explained at the press conference at the Biennale di Venezia, they made this film out of a duty to use their position as Israelis to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which their country is responsible. While filming, they found themselves asking the same questions as the Jewish generations of the twentieth century: how can one group of people allow the total dehumanization of another? How does a system like this work from the inside?
Why it is worth seeing
Many of the revelations in the film were published in the months after the October 7, 2023 attacks by The Guardian, in collaboration with the Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, but the film lets us explore something deeper than investigative journalism alone: not only the words that are spoken, but also those that are not, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence.
NAZA is a documentary worth seeing because it is not the film of the year: it is the most important film made in recent years.
Where to see it in Florence, theater by theater
The film is showing in many theaters, dubbed in Italian or in the original language with subtitles, at various times:
Cinema Astra
Where Piazza Cesare Beccaria 9
When Monday, September 28 at 5:30, 7 and 8:30 pm; Wednesday, September 30 at 4:30, 8 and 9:30 pm; Thursday, October 1 at 3:45 and 7:30 pm
Language original Hebrew and English, Italian subtitles
Tickets on the Fondazione Stensen page
Spazio Alfieri
Where Via dell’Ulivo 8
When Monday, September 28 and Tuesday, September 29 at 2:45, 4:15, 6, 7:30 and 9:15 pm; Wednesday, September 30 at 2:30, 4, 5:45 and 7:15 pm
Language afternoon shows dubbed in Italian; the 7:30 and 9:15 pm shows (7:15 pm on the 30th) in the original language with subtitles
Tickets on the Spazio Alfieri website
Cinema Adriano
Where Via Romagnosi 46
When Tuesday, September 29 and Wednesday, September 30 at 5 and 9:30 pm
Tickets on the cinema website
Cinema Flora
Where Piazza Dalmazia 2r
When Monday, September 28 and Tuesday, September 29 at 5:15, 7 and 8:45 pm
Language 8:45 pm show in the original language with subtitles
Tickets on the Circuito Cinema website
The Space Cinema Firenze
Where Via di Novoli 2
When Monday, September 28 and Tuesday, September 29 at 8 pm; Wednesday, September 30 at 7:50 pm; Thursday, October 1 to Sunday, October 4 at 7:40 pm
Tickets from €10.99, on the The Space website
UCI Cinemas Firenze and Campi Bisenzio
Where Via del Cavallaccio in Florence, and in Campi Bisenzio
When Monday, September 28, Tuesday, September 29 and Wednesday, September 30 at 8:15 pm
Tickets on the UCI Cinemas website
Teatro Cinema Italia, Pontassieve
Where Via Tanzini 48, Pontassieve
When Tuesday, September 29 and Wednesday, September 30 at 5:30, 7:30 and 9:15 pm
Language original language with Italian subtitles
Info on the town council page
CinemAntella, Bagno a Ripoli
Where Via di Pulicciano 53, Antella
When Monday, September 28 and Tuesday, September 29 at 9 pm
When you can watch it for free
If you can’t make it to the cinema, you will be able to watch it for free. On September 24 the directors and The Guardian, which co-produced the film, announced that NAZA will be published on the British newspaper’s website in November, once its theatrical run in more than fifty countries is over. The exact date has not been announced yet, as Il Post reports.
Some theaters are showing it without a ticket, too. In Perugia the PerSo Film Festival is screening it on Monday, September 28, simultaneously at the Zenith and the PostModernissimo, with 160 free seats, as La Nazione reports.
In Florence, no theater has announced free screenings so far: the shows listed above are all ticketed.
