NAZA documentary on Gaza killings opens in French cinemas on 12 October

The release in France

NAZA is set for a restricted run in French cinemas on Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 October, with an exceptional visa covering 500 screenings according to Le Monde. Le Figaro describes the same two-day window and says the film will be visible free of charge on the internet after Israel's legislative elections. Le Monde places the free online release in November. Le Figaro also says the film criticises the Israeli army's strategy in Gaza. Spanish cinemas also open the film this week, per La Vanguardia's weekly listings. The timeline below sets out the French rollout as the articles describe it.

Testimony from inside the system

Co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor interview 24 former Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops with their faces and voices concealed. According to La Vanguardia, the interviewees describe how they identified alleged Hamas members in Gaza through an artificial intelligence program and how the army then killed them. El Pais says the testimonies were corroborated by more than a hundred interviewees, and that The Guardian co-produced the film. The film's title comes from the army acronym NAZA, which El Confidencial says stands for 'nezek agavi' and is used as a euphemism for civilians killed as collateral damage. Death tolls differ between outlets: La Vanguardia cites more than 70,000 Palestinians killed, El Pais cites 73,000, and El Confidencial cites 72,945, each as of its own publication.

Filmmakers and pressure

Abraham and Szor co-directed No Other Land (2024) with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, a film El Confidencial says won the Oscar in 2025. NAZA received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and El Confidencial notes that the previous year's Silver Lion went to Kaouther Ben Hania's La voz de Hind. El Confidencial reports that members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government have threatened to strip the directors of their Israeli nationality. El Pais says the directors aim the film at Israeli public opinion and at the states that back Israel, above all the United States and Germany. The film arrives two days after the third anniversary of the 7 October attacks, which El Confidencial says killed 1,195 Israelis. El Pais cites Committee to Protect Journalists figures of more than 200 Palestinian reporters killed by the Israeli army in Gaza.

Reception and what comes next

In a Guardian essay published on 9 October, Omer Bartov writes that the interviewees' calm, technical tone reminded him of Werner Best, a senior SS official and jurist who helped organise Nazi death squads. Bartov argues that modern genocide depends on technocrats and planners working at a distance from the killing, rather than on brutes and sadists. The French cinema run takes place on 12 and 13 October, and the free online version follows in November according to Le Monde, or after Israel's legislative elections according to Le Figaro. No date for those elections appears in the articles, so the timing of the online release stays tied to that vote.