Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors behind the Oscar-winning No Other Land, have returned with a new documentary that has shaken the Venice Film Festival to its core. Titled Naza, the 80-minute film had its world premiere on September 10, 2026, in the Sala Grande, and it has quickly become one of the most talked-about titles of this year’s festival.
The documentary is built entirely around secret nighttime interviews conducted on rooftops in Tel Aviv over a period of three years. Twenty-four Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers agreed to speak on camera, their faces obscured and voices digitally altered to protect their identities. They describe, in plain and often chilling detail, the systems they used to carry out airstrikes in Gaza.
What Naza Means and Why It Matters
The film’s title comes from a Hebrew military acronym used by Israeli intelligence to refer to the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike. In simple terms, “Naza” is the army’s word for collateral damage. Instead of saying “we expect to kill 20 civilians,” officers would say “20 Naza.” The term strips away the human reality behind each number.
One interviewee explains that 20 Naza became a benchmark for acceptable civilian deaths during strikes targeting suspected Hamas operatives. The highest number one officer recalls approving was 500 Naza for a single target. Another officer describes the atmosphere as “mass killing on an industrial scale.”
The testimonies also reveal how the military used hacked mobile phones to track targets. One officer says the phrase “daddy’s home,” picked up from a child’s phone, was enough to trigger an airstrike. The film shows how artificial intelligence systems helped identify targets based on phone data, with a 15% error rate admitted by one of the officers involved in developing the technology.
“We show in our film a targeting system that is, by design, targeting people in civilian spaces, in their family homes. Sometimes it can be 500 NAZA … destroying entire villages or entire neighborhoods.” — Yuval Abraham told Reuters
Inside the Rooftop Interviews
The film’s structure is simple and effective. Abraham sits opposite each interviewee on a Tel Aviv rooftop at night, while co-director Szor handles cinematography. The Tel Aviv skyline glows in the background, with glimpses of ordinary life in the city’s apartment buildings. This stands in sharp contrast to Gaza, which is just 37 miles away. Scenes of destruction in Gaza appear only briefly at the end of the film.
Several of the officers interviewed make direct comparisons to the Holocaust. One recalls a school trip to Auschwitz and says he now understands how people could commit such acts. Another officer admits to knowingly killing civilians, including children. When Abraham asks one interviewee directly if what is happening is genocide, the officer answers, “Yes, absolutely.”
“We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did.” — Yuval Abraham told AFP
Rachel Szor explained the decision to revisit material that had already been published in outlets like +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian. “We felt that there is still some sort of importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film,” she said. “It’s different to hear, actually, the people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera, and sketch it, show it.”
Record-Breaking Premiere and Global Distribution
The response at Venice was immediate and overwhelming. Naza received a 24.5-minute standing ovation, the longest in the festival’s history. The previous record was 22 minutes for The Voice of Hind Rajab in 2025. Audience members held up Palestinian flags as the applause continued, and executive producer Jonathan Glazer embraced Abraham and Szor on stage.
The film is produced by The Guardian alongside James Wilson of JW Films, with Jonathan Glazer serving as executive producer. Glazer and Wilson previously worked together on The Zone of Interest, which won the Oscar for Best International Feature. MK2 Films has boarded world sales rights for the documentary. In Italy, it will be distributed by IWonder.
Naza is the only documentary competing for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which runs until September 12. The film will also have its North American premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival, which takes place from September 25 to October 12, 2026.
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What Critics Are Saying
Early reviews have been overwhelmingly strong. The Hollywood Reporter called it “a sober and indispensable doc highlighting the immoral, state-of-the-art killing machine employed by the IDF in Gaza.” IndieWire gave it an A score, describing it as “a documentary exposing the brutal machinery of modern genocide.” Vulture called it “one of the most important films of our time,” noting that “the information has been out there for months, and much of the world has shrugged, if not ignored it completely. Perhaps it will be hard to ignore now.”
Screen International called it an “urgent, gut-punch doc from the No Other Land directors,” while Next Best Picture gave it 9/10 and flagged its Oscar credentials. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave the film 4/5 stars, noting that while the anonymity of the interviewees lessens the impact of their testimony, the film still casts “a chilling light on what is happening now in Gaza.”
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the documentary. Israel has consistently said it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, a claim Hamas denies. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.
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