Mumbai: NAZA, a documentary about Palestinian civilian casualties of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, received a 24-and-a-half-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival Thursday.
The ovation broke a Venice record set only last year, when Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab received 22 minutes of applause. Palestinian flags were raised in the audience. Executive producer Jonathan Glazer hugged Abraham and Szor, who were both in tears by the end.
NAZA features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers who were involved in the surveillance or remote killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
The interviews were filmed in secret over three years, mostly at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv. The officers and soldiers agreed to speak only if their identities were protected. Their faces and voices were digitally altered for the film.
The title NAZA comes from an Israeli military acronym for the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike. The film’s official synopsis says it shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza”.
Also Read: India blocks Oscar-nominated film to maintain ties with Israel, says Mumbai distributor
AI-assisted system
The officers describe an AI-assisted targeting system that used information taken from hacked mobile phones. One says that the phrase “daddy’s home”, picked up by a child’s phone, could be enough to trigger an airstrike on the family’s house.
Abraham said the documentary could make it harder to deny what took place in Gaza.
“I think that this piece is likely to make the denial of what took place in Gaza, not only its genocidal nature, but really the specifics of what it looked like from inside the Israeli system, harder,” he said in an interview.
Abraham and Szor were two of the four directors of No Other Land, which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2025. The film followed Palestinians resisting attempts by the Israeli military to drive them from their homes in the occupied West Bank.
NAZA is the only documentary competing for the Golden Lion this year. It was produced by British newspaper The Guardian and James Wilson, with Glazer serving as executive producer.
(Edited by Stela Dey)