Sightlines · reception

How NAZA was received

2026 · Yuval Abraham · NAZA on Sightlines

The arc

NAZA stormed Venice with a 25-minute standing ovation, breaking the record set days earlier by The Voice of Hind Rajab, and took the Special Jury Prize before adding San Sebastian's Audience Award for Best European Film. A Guardian and MK2 self-distributed rollout, opening at New York's IFC Center and widening to 85 North American locations, has carried it to $7.6 million worldwide on a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score across 66 reviews.

What’s debated

Among critics the only real quarrel is framing, Time Out arguing that it must be judged as exemplary cinema and not just indispensable journalism, while the pushback, typified by an Algemeiner headline branding it an anti-Israel doc, disputes the subject rather than the filmmaking.

Its footprint

The image that traveled was the ovation itself: 25 minutes, a Venice record, Palestinian and Lebanese flags unfurling in the hall. Time Out's five-star verdict, that as cinema it is exemplary and as journalism it is inarguable, has become the critical shorthand, with The Hollywood Reporter calling it a sober, indispensable indictment of a state-of-the-art killing machine.

Where it stands

Barely six weeks from its premiere it is already among the year's most decorated documentaries, a Venice prize winner and audience favorite that confirms Abraham and Szor, two of the four Oscar-winning directors of No Other Land, as a major documentary force.

Did you know? Its 24 sources, all former IDF Intelligence Corps operatives, were interviewed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops with faces hidden and voices digitally altered, with Jonathan Glazer aboard as executive producer and Laura Poitras as advisor.