Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor Return with NAZA

The first trailer and poster for NAZA, the new documentary from No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, have arrived ahead of its theatrical release on September 30.

The film premiered at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival and screens next at the 64th New York Film Festival this weekend. Jonathan Glazer backed the project. After its theatrical run, NAZA will stream on The Guardian in November.

The synopsis reads: "In secret conversations on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night, the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are revealed by the people who designed and operated them."

Abraham and Szor filmed members of Israel's military on Tel Aviv rooftops at night over the past three years. "We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israeli filmmakers and journalists to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible," the directors said.

"While filming members of Israel's military on rooftops at night in Tel Aviv over the past three years, we found ourselves asking the very questions that were asked by our grandparents' generation and throughout the 20th century: how does one group of people allow the total dehumanisation of another? What do the inner workings of such a system look like?"

Many of the film's findings have already reached the public record. The directors note that "many of the revelations in the film were published almost immediately as we learned of them, in the months following the October 7th attacks, by The Guardian (one of NAZA's producers), in collaboration with reporting partners +972 Magazine and Local Call."

The film, they argue, goes beyond what investigative journalism alone can capture. "The film lets us explore something deeper than we could in our investigative journalism alone: not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence."

NAZA arrives with considerable weight behind it. Abraham and Szor's previous film, No Other Land, established them as two of the most closely watched documentarians working today, and their follow-up again pairs forensic examination of Israeli military systems with material gathered at personal risk over three years of nighttime filming.

The September 30 theatrical opening will be followed by the November streaming release on The Guardian, extending the reach of findings first broken in print by the paper and its partners.