Az Zeeb
2026 | Documentary | 85 minutes | World premiere: FIDMarseille
Rafael Guendelman found his father's old Super 8 reels and made a documentary that won't let you look away. It's not because the story is simple — it's because it refuses to be. Guendelman's Chilean, Jewish, and Palestinian. That's not background. That's the whole film.
What you're actually watching
The movie works like an excavation. Guendelman discovers these home-movie reels — the kind of cheerful, accidental footage families shoot without knowing anyone else will ever see it — and they pull him across three geographies. Chile, where his family settled. Israel and Palestine, where those roots run deeper. The footage doesn't explain anything. It raises questions instead.
What's striking is the gap between what's on screen — casual domestic moments, nothing staged — and what's happening in the world those images were made inside of. That contradiction becomes the whole film. Guendelman doesn't smooth it over. He sits with it for 85 minutes and asks you to do the same.
This isn't a family portrait. It's closer to what happens when you hold two inherited stories at once without flinching from what that costs you. The structure moves between countries rather than building toward a single argument about who's right or wrong. That's genuinely hard to pull off.
Why FIDMarseille picked it
The film premiered at FIDMarseille, one of Europe's most respected documentary festivals, in the First Film Competition — a category reserved specifically for debut features. That placement matters. Programmers don't select work for that slot just because it's competent. They saw something original.
Brisa Films produced the project, and the selection came with an official announcement celebrating Guendelman's transnational scope and his personal stake in the material. You can't fake that. He's not reporting on a conflict from outside — he's someone who carries both sides of it in his own family history. That changes everything about how you shoot, what you choose to include, where you point the camera.
Hard to say whether the festival run will translate into wide theatrical distribution yet. At this stage, Az Zeeb is firmly in the festival-launch phase. No aggregated critical scores from Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic have consolidated, though early Letterboxd responses suggest viewers are connecting with its refusal to simplify things.
Where to watch it now
Az Zeeb is currently available on major streaming platforms. The where-to-watch widget at the top of this page on Movie OTT shows every service streaming it right now — updated live, so availability reflects this week's actual listings rather than outdated snapshots. Because the film is still moving through its release cycle following the FIDMarseille premiere, new platforms may pick it up. Check back here for the most current picture of where it's landed.
The thing about Super 8 as evidence
Here's what I keep thinking about: home movies aren't made for an audience. Nobody's performing. That accidental honesty is something you can't fake, and Guendelman understands this completely. When he screens those reels and then travels to the places they reference — or more precisely, the places they were made against — the tension between the images and the historical weight behind them becomes the real subject.
The 85-minute runtime feels deliberate, not constrained. There's discipline in keeping a film this personal and politically engaged from sprawling into an exhaustive historical survey that would dilute everything. Guendelman keeps the camera close to his own experience. That's the right call — and it's exactly what documentary filmmaking does best when it works. It doesn't simplify. It illuminates.
Is it for you?
Watch Az Zeeb if you want nonfiction cinema that takes political and historical complexity seriously without losing the human thread running through it. This isn't an easy watch in the sense that it demands something from you — attention, a willingness to sit with ambiguity, openness to a story that won't resolve into comfort. But that demand is exactly why it justifies the format.
If you've appreciated documentaries like The Mole Agent or All Light Everywhere — films that layer personal perspective with larger historical or political questions — you'll recognize what Guendelman's doing here. Same commitment to complexity without cheap resolution.
What happens next
As Az Zeeb moves from festivals into wider release, Movie OTT's streaming tracker will update with new platforms and release windows. The film doesn't have an MPAA rating yet, which is typical for festival-circuit documentaries at this stage. That'll change once theatrical or broader streaming distribution is confirmed.
For now — keep it on your watchlist. Guendelman's made something personal enough to feel urgent and rigorous enough to feel trustworthy. It's the kind of debut that justifies the form.