(From L) Jonathan Glazer, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham pose at the photocall of ‘Naza’ presented in competition at the festival.
A chilling new documentary about Israel’s AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza from two Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers received a 25-minute ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 10.
The audience clapped continuously for Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after the screening, an AFP reporter witnessed, setting what is thought to be a new record in Venice after a 23-minute ovation for another film about Gaza last year.
In their film “NAZA,” Abraham and Szor used conversations with 24 different Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who spoke on condition that their identities be protected. “We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,” Abraham told AFP.
“The goal was very simple: We wanted to hear in as much detail as possible, how the systems of killing in Gaza looked like, how they operated.”
The 80-minute film left many audience members stunned, with interviewees describing how they felt like they worked in a killing “factory” or a lethal video game.
“NAZA” draws its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that are expected to be killed in an airstrike.
The men and women featured in “NAZA,” with their voices and faces digitally altered, detail an AI-powered system known as “Lavender” that was used to identify people for assassination.
“Lavender” uses data from the mass surveillance of Gaza, where the entire telecommunications network is monitored by Israel, to identify targets based on their phone calls, movements and interactions.
The result of a nearly three-year investigation, “NAZA” is the only documentary in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which wraps up tomorrow.
Along with Palestinian peers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, Abraham and Szor won an Oscar in 2025 for their film “No Other Land” about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza, accusing Hamas of hiding among the population of the densely packed and besieged enclave.
Last year, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a docu-drama about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces, picked up second prize at the festival after receiving a 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere.
