The 83rd Venice Film Festival concludes on September 12, 2026, with the Golden Lion award in contention after the documentary NAZA drew a record 25-minute standing ovation. Co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the film details AI-powered targeting systems used in Gaza.
The 83rd Venice Film Festival reaches its climax on Saturday with the announcement of the jury awards, led by jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal. With 21 features competing for the prestigious Golden Lion, the festival’s closing hours have been overshadowed by intense reactions to late additions, star-driven Hollywood projects, and international dramas. The Maggie Gyllenhaal-led jury will decide the big prizes for film, direction, and acting, alongside a jury that includes Kaouther Ben Hania, English composer Daniel Blumberg, French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli, Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, and Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To.
NAZA Breaks Standing Ovation Records at the Venice Premiere
The late festival addition NAZA dominated festival discourse following its premiere, capturing a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation in the Sala Grande. The feature runs 77 minutes, and it screened in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema) on 10 September at 5.15 pm, in the presence of the directors, the producers, Guardian journalists, and the official delegation. The film surpasses the 24-minute ovation recorded last year by Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab,
a film about a 6-year-old girl killed in Gaza that received the Silver Lion. NAZA is notably the only documentary in competition.
The project emerged from a nearly three-year investigation built on testimony from Israeli military and intelligence sources who spoke on the condition that their identities be concealed. Their voices and faces were digitally altered, and they were filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops. According to the synopsis, the film was shot at night on Tel Aviv rooftops and focuses on the killings of Palestinian civilians. The title NAZA appears throughout the documentary, and it is a Hebrew intelligence euphemism used to indicate the number of civilians expected to be killed in a given air stroke.
We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,
Abraham told the AFP news agency. The goal was very simple: we wanted to hear, in as much detail as possible, how the systems of killing in Gaza looked, how they operated,
he added.
Beyond the power of its testimonies and the rigor of its journalistic approach, the film by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor struck us f,
Nathanaël Karmitz, CEO of mk2, and Fionnuala Jamison, Managing Director of mk2 Films, said.
Interviewees describe an AI-assisted system. The film documents Israel’s use of AI-powered systems to target Palestinians in Gaza.
Production Backing and Prior Festival Precedents
The documentary was produced by The Guardian alongside James Wilson (JW Films), and executive-produced by Jonathan Glazer. MK2 boarded NAZA, and the news outlet The Guardian also produced the project alongside filmmakers behind The Zone of Interest. Wilson and Glazer are the Oscar-winning team behind The Zone of Interest. Co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor won an Oscar in 2025 for No Other Land, a documentary on Israeli settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, made with Palestinian co-directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. Abraham and Szor were two of the four directors of the 2025 best documentary winner No Other Land, the story of Palestinian activists fighting to protect their communities from demolition by the Israeli military. A collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, No Other Land was made over four years between 2019 and 2023, wrapping production days before Hamas launched its deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza.
Naza builds on reporting between 2023 and 2025 published by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian. The war was top of mind at last year’s festival as well, where thousands gathered for a large pro-Palestinian protest.
Wild Horse Nine and the Wider Festival Competition
John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell pose for photographers at the red carpet for the film ‘Wild Horse Nine’ during the 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026.
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