A Controversial Documentary Goes City by City on Its Own

The documentary NAZA, which IndieWire describes as controversial, is moving ahead with a self-distribution strategy that will roll the film out across American cities beginning in October. Self-distribution trades the reach and muscle of a conventional distributor for control over the calendar and the pitch, and it puts the question of how far the film travels in the filmmakers' hands rather than a buyer's. The first test is simply whether a city-by-city rollout builds the kind of momentum that a wider opening is supposed to create.