Lifestyle
October 24th, 2026
Author
Luca Guerrini

Why films about Palestine are filling cinemas in Italy The success of "NAZA" and the growing interest in cinema tackling the Palestinian question

Why films about Palestine are filling cinemas in Italy The success of NAZA and the growing interest in cinema tackling the Palestinian question

NAZA, a documentary describing the automated system used by the Israeli army to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, performed so well at the Italian box office that it helped draw attention to other films related to the Palestinian question screening during the same weeks. Among these is Palestine 36 – When It All Began, a fiction film set during the Arab Revolt of 1936–1937, which grossed €390,000. The documentary The Bibi Files, dedicated to the power system that characterises the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the judicial investigations involving him, also surpassed €300,000.

One possible explanation for the success of NAZA is its release date's proximity to 7 October, the anniversary of the attack by the radical group Hamas that triggered the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The timing alone, however, is not enough to explain box office results of this magnitude. The warm reception of NAZA prompted its Italian distributor, I Wonder Pictures, to extend its theatrical run. Initially, the documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor was scheduled to screen in Italian cinemas for just three days (28, 29 and 30 September), following the so-called "event release" model. This approach is generally adopted for productions unlikely to attract a wide audience, but which can count on a small and particularly devoted following for certain subjects, as is the case with anime or concert films.

Why NAZA was a success

From its premiere in Venice, where it received the Special Jury Prize, NAZA attracted international attention and also became the subject of fierce controversy in Israel. Yet the success it achieved in Italy is nonetheless surprising and in some respects unique. In the country, the documentary grossed approximately €5 million, a remarkably high figure given that it was screening alongside more ambitious and heavily promoted films, such as Mammina or Digger — the latter barely exceeded one million euros at the box office despite starring Tom Cruise. To put NAZA's result in perspective, another film that grossed €5 million at the Italian box office this year is The Drama, which, however, features two major box-office draws in Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.

NAZA's Italian earnings amount to more than half of the documentary's total worldwide gross. In France, in its first two days of release, the documentary grossed around €700,000, while in Italy, over the same period, it surpassed one million. In Spain and the United States, where it was distributed through a standard theatrical run rather than an event release, the overall gross settled at levels comparable to those in France.

Why documentaries like NAZA are so well received in Italy

Documentaries generally post far more modest box office returns than other film genres and rarely surpass one million euros. NAZA, however, does not reconstruct events that are already widely known, as is often the case with traditional documentaries, but is rather the cinematic adaptation of an investigation carried out by the two directors in collaboration with the renowned British newspaper The Guardian, which also co-produced the film. Last year, The Voice of Hind Rajab — which tells the true story of an attempt to rescue a Palestinian girl who became trapped in a car after an Israeli attack that killed the rest of her family — also received a warm reception in Italy, and in that case too it was a cinematic adaptation of real events; the film also received a major award at the Venice Film Festival.

Another documentary that generated long queues at the cinemas where it was shown and prompted exhibitors to screen it multiple times is Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, broadcast last year on the British channel Channel 4. Directed by British filmmaker Karim Shah, the film investigates Israeli army attacks on hospitals and healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip.

The Italian public's engagement with Palestine has several roots. In the country, collectives and organised groups have long been staging protests calling for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories and challenging the decision by Giorgia Meloni's government to maintain ties with Israel; the mobilisation has also grown thanks to the attention generated last year by the Global Sumud Flotilla, the international civilian sea mission bound for Gaza with the aim of delivering humanitarian aid and denouncing the blockade of the Strip, which involved a number of Italians. These initiatives have also drawn in many people with no ties to organised movements, who are eager to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and, in many cases, their dissent from the Italian government's stance — a government that has almost never taken a position condemning the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and when it has done so, has been far from forceful.

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