Gaza documentary NAZA tops Italy’s box office ahead of Avengers Endgame: Encore

The documentary NAZA has opened at No. 1 at the Italian box office, ahead of Avengers Endgame: Encore. The film about testimonies concerning the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was initially booked for three days, but its run has been extended after sold-out screenings.

On Monday, its opening day, NAZA grossed €451,872, with a per-site average of €1,153. By the end of Tuesday, its total had risen to about €1.1m, while Avengers Endgame: Encore had made €356,000 over the same period.

More than 150 cinemas have already extended the documentary’s programming, and that number is expected to grow. Italian distributor Andrea Romeo told La Repubblica that screenings would continue as long as cinemas wanted to show the film.

Audience response across Italy

Audiences in packed cinemas applauded after screenings, and some attendees held Palestinian flags. At Rome’s Tibur cinema, where the film is playing in both auditoriums, staff member Marco described complete silence throughout the screening; the venue has extended its run by at least another week.

Anec president Simone Gialdini attributed the strong turnout partly to the film’s political subject and activist mobilisation, but also said it had attracted a diverse audience of different ages.

The film’s international rollout

NAZA was directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian. It won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, where its premiere received a 25-minute ovation, a festival record.

The documentary features testimony from 24 anonymised Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers about AI-powered surveillance systems used to select targets. Its title comes from an acronym that, according to the report, Israeli intelligence uses euphemistically to indicate the expected number of civilians killed in an airstrike.

The film will be released in more than 50 territories over the next month. It opens in New York on Wednesday, followed by a wider US release from 9 October; it is scheduled to become freely available on theguardian.com in mid-November.