Venice Adds Gaza Documentary NAZA to Main Competition

The Venice Film Festival has added NAZA, a documentary about the civilian toll of the Israel-Hamas war, to the main Competition lineup for its 83rd edition.

La Biennale di Venezia announced the addition on August 24, completing the Competition section before the festival is scheduled to open September 2. The selection gives the film an international platform at a major cultural event where programming decisions have increasingly intersected with debates about war, human rights and political responsibility.

What Venice announced

Venice lists NAZA as an 80-minute United Kingdom production in Hebrew and English. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor direct the film. La Biennale says it was produced by The Guardian and James Wilson of JW Films, with Jonathan Glazer as executive producer.

The festival’s official synopsis says the film was shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv and examines what it describes as systems behind the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That is the festival’s attributed description of the film’s subject and argument, not an independent finding by the festival or a legal judgment about the events depicted.

La Biennale has scheduled a public Competition screening for September 10, 2026, at 5:15 p.m. in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido di Venezia.

A film from the directors of No Other Land

The selection carries added attention because Abraham and Szor were two of the four co-directors of No Other Land, which won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature.

The Associated Press reported that NAZA is the only documentary competing for Venice’s Golden Lion. The film has therefore been selected to compete for the festival’s top prize, but it has not won, been named a finalist or been identified by the festival as a favorite.

Why the selection matters

Film festivals do more than present new work. Their competition lineups determine which films receive concentrated international attention from critics, distributors, filmmakers and audiences. A Gaza documentary placed in Venice’s most prominent competition is therefore both a film-industry event and part of a wider conversation about how cultural institutions present work connected to the war.

AP also reported on Gaza-related discussion and protest surrounding recent Venice and Biennale events, including a large pro-Palestinian demonstration at last year’s festival. That context helps explain why the addition may draw scrutiny, but the programming decision itself should not be treated as a formal institutional position by the festival on the conflict or on every claim made in the film.

When and where to see it

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival is scheduled to run from September 2 through September 12, 2026, on the Lido di Venezia. The September 10 screening of NAZA is listed in the public program and remains subject to the festival’s ticketing and access rules.

The Golden Lion winner is scheduled to be announced at the festival’s conclusion on September 12. Until then, NAZA remains a selected Competition entry whose next major milestone is its public screening in Venice.

Sources

• La Biennale di Venezia announcement
• Associated Press