James Costa On For The Love Of Docs Slate, NAZA Backlash — SkimNews
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- James Costa joined Deadline's Doc Talk podcast to discuss how he curates the For the Love of Docs virtual series, presented in partnership with National Geographic Documentary Films and screening films free to the public, guild members, and filmmakers.
- This year's For the Love of Docs slate includes Seized (Sharon Liese), Everybody to Kenmure Street (Felipe Bustos Sierra), Ask E. Jean (Ivy Meeropol), The Life We Leave (J.J. Gerber), and To Hold a Mountain (Biljana Tutorov and Peter Glomazić, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance).
- Costa told Doc Talk that this year's Oscar documentary race has few obvious frontrunners, with many late-breaking contenders from Venice, Telluride, and Toronto — in contrast to 2025 when all eventual Best Documentary Feature nominees premiered at Sundance.
- NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of Academy Award–winning No Other Land, features whistleblowers critical of Israel's war in Gaza and has immediately risen to the top of Oscar conversations following its late-year premiere.
- Benjamin Netanyahu denounced NAZA and is pushing legislation that could strip Abraham and Szor of their Israeli citizenship; the International Documentary Association — where Costa formerly served as board co-president — has rebuked the threats against the filmmakers.
- Doc Talk is hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Deadline's senior documentary editor Matt Carey, and is produced by Deadline and Ridley's Nō Studios.
Why it matters: Costa's dual vantage point as For the Love of Docs curator and former IDA board co-president gives him unusual standing to weigh in on the NAZA backlash — one of Oscar season's most-discussed documentaries is simultaneously the target of an active prime-ministerial push to strip its directors of citizenship. The episode surfaces both the unusually open documentary race and the rare collision of geopolitics with the awards conversation that major outlets framing this as a pure Oscar-season story tend to underplay.
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