NAZA: How and Where to Watch the Guardian's Acclaimed Gaza Documentary - The Guardian

“Tough to watch, and impossible to ignore,” according to The New York Times, the acclaimed documentary NAZA will be released in full on the Guardian’s website for free in early December.

Since its release last month, the film has been viewed by over 1.5 million people and screened in 47 different countries, ranking it among the most-watched documentary films to have a theatrical release in 2026. Although various cinemas and distributors in Israel have been offered the film, it has not yet been shown there.

NAZA, produced by The Guardian and directed by Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, includes testimony from 24 soldiers and Israeli military intelligence officers who were involved in the remote killing and surveillance of Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza. The title is derived from an Israeli military acronym used as a euphemism for civilians anticipated to be killed during a military attack.

The interviewees detail methods used by the military in Gaza, including AI-based systems built to identify large numbers of potential Hamas operatives who were subsequently bombed in their homes at night, knowing the attacks would also kill their families. Interviews were filmed at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv on the condition of anonymity, with the appearance and voices of participants digitally altered.

The project builds on revelations first published by the Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972, the Hebrew-language news outlet Local Call, and The Guardian between 2023 and 2025. Abraham and Szor were two of the four co-directors of No Other Land, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2025, alongside Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. NAZA was co-produced by James Wilson and executive-produced by Jonathan Glazer, the team behind the Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest.

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The film won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival in September, where its premiere drew a 25-minute ovation—a festival record. In November, it won best political documentary from the Critics Choice Association.

New York Magazine described it as “one of the most important films of our time,” while the Financial Times awarded it five stars, noting that “journalism and film-making brilliantly entwine.” British Vogue called the project a “brilliant and harrowing film.”

The Israeli military and government have launched fierce attacks against the film, its directors, and their confidential sources. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed the head of the Shin Bet security service and the attorney general to identify the interviewed sources and prosecute them for causing “harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests.”

Accusing them of treason, Netanyahu also threatened to strip the citizenship of Szor and Abraham. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said that the military would “not allow soldiers to be made targets through lies and blood libels” and would use “every tool at our disposal” against the film.

Far-right groups have vowed to hound the filmmakers upon their return to Israel and picketed Szor’s family home, with some messages containing explicit calls for violence, including a demand for the “death penalty for traitors.”

The Israeli military claimed there were “substantial errors” in the film and that it relied on sources with only a partial picture of the target approval process. It asserted that while AI was used to help identify targets, final decisions on strikes and civilian risk were signed off by officers.

NAZA Documentary Controversy: Netanyahu Attacks Film Over Gaza War Claims — The Sunday Guardian

The film team stated in response that they had interviewed more than 100 sources who possessed knowledge of the military systems utilized during the war. “Our country is doing so much to hide these systems,” Szor said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has promoted an online project called NAZA: The Real Story, hosted on nazadocumentary.com, which mimics the genuine film’s style and has misled some viewers. The site initially presented itself as a promotional page for the original documentary before shifting to platform the rival film, which has been promoted by Israeli embassies.

Ariel Averbuch, an Israeli attorney and army reservist who co-created the rival project, described it as an “offensive move” to shift the world’s focus from allegations about military killings.

Viewers can sign up on the Guardian’s website to be notified of the exact streaming date in early December and receive a direct link to the film when it goes live.

Worth a look