'It's a film about systems of mass killing': NAZA directors speak in London

NAZA, the documentary built on testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders, opened in cinemas in more than 50 countries this week. Its directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, answered questions from the Guardian's editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, at the film's London premiere on Thursday.

The film is, in the directors' own words, bigger than any single event. "It's a film about systems of mass killing," they said at the premiere. That framing matters. Rather than following one incident or one person, NAZA assembles its account from insiders who describe how the machinery itself works.

Who made the film?

Abraham and Szor are not newcomers to this territory. They were the Israeli half of the team behind No Other Land, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2025. That film paired Israeli and Palestinian co-directors and charted the destruction of a West Bank village; NAZA extends the same method of insider testimony to a different subject.

The new production shares some of that earlier film's visual logic. According to the Guardian, NAZA was shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv. The interviews with the 24 military insiders sit at the centre of a film that reviewers have described as "tough to watch, impossible to ignore".

What does the release change for viewers?

The practical answer is access. NAZA will stream for free on the Guardian's website from late November. So the cinema rollout across more than 50 countries this week is the first window, and a no-paywall stream follows roughly two months behind it. For anyone outside a theatrical market, the free stream is the moment the film becomes genuinely hard to avoid.

The premiere conversation itself is part of that distribution plan. Viner's on-stage questions, released as video by the Guardian, give the directors a platform to explain the film in their own words while the theatrical run is still building.

Why the format matters

The choice to interview 24 insiders — and to shoot them at night, on rooftops — does something specific. It removes the familiar settings of official military commentary and puts the testimony in a stripped, anonymous space. The number is the point: this isn't one defector or one whistle-blower, it's two dozen voices describing the same system.

The directors' Oscar pedigree gives the film a ready-made audience, and the Guardian's involvement as both interviewer and distributor gives it a distribution channel that skips conventional streaming gatekeepers. That combination — award-winning filmmakers plus a free, high-traffic platform — is what makes the late-November stream the date to watch.