Guardian: NAZA awarded Venice’s Special Jury Prize

The Guardian News and Media press office published its prize note on Saturday 12 September 2026, timestamped 15:00 EDT and modified the same afternoon. It says NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by The Guardian, received the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. The synopsis line is the one already on the Biennale listing: shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, the film details the systems behind what the note calls Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Euronews, the day before, had left open the question of the Golden Lion and said that award would be announced on this same Saturday. The press note does not claim the Golden Lion. It claims the Special Jury Prize.

Lindsay Poulton, identified as the Guardian’s head of documentaries and as one of the producers, says the jury’s recognition is a testament to cinematic storytelling grounded in independent journalism, and that the producers hope the film brings renewed attention to what is happening in Gaza. Nicole Jackson, head of multimedia and an executive producer, says there has already been a huge response and that a global theatrical release will be announced soon, with the directors and with MK2. No release day is given in the note. A later update on Peter Bradshaw’s review, modified on 16 October 2026, said the film was by then in cinemas in more than 50 countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, and would be free on the Guardian’s website from late November. That later sentence is not in this press note. It is the one collected at https://nazafilm.org/watch.

The note’s credits name producers Harry Davies, Lindsay Poulton and James Wilson, executive producer Jonathan Glazer, Guardian executive producers Paul Lewis and Nicole Jackson, and further executive producers Joseph Schull, Harriet Gugenheim and Wendy vanden Heuvel, with Ekaterina Ochagavia and Noa Yachot as co-producers. Abraham and Szor are described as two of the four co-directors of No Other Land. Wilson and Glazer are identified through The Zone of Interest, which the note says won the 2024 Oscar for best international film. MK2 is named as global sales agent. The biographies call Abraham a filmmaker and investigative journalist, and Szor a filmmaker and cinematographer.

This note is the producer’s confirmation of the prize, not a review and not the ministers’ response. Those came next and are filed on https://nazafilm.org/record/timeline. Public screenings, as distinct from a sales announcement, are at https://nazafilm.org/showings. The press office text stays the canonical English record that a jury prize was awarded on 12 September 2026.