At the Venice Film Festival, a documentary called NAZA — named after an Israeli military acronym for civilians expected to die in strikes — premiered as the only Golden Lion contender built entirely on testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders. Directed by the Oscar-winning team behind No Other Land and produced by the Guardian, the film does not allege aberrations but describes a deliberate architecture: AI systems selecting targets, families bombed in their sleep, phones hacked to hear final conversations. It arrives as more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2
Documentary reveals Israeli military systems behind Gaza civilian killings
Over 73,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since 2023, majority civilians, with 174,000+ injured; man-made famine created by Israeli food restrictions; over three-quarters of homes razed or damaged.
The system and its cogs—not isolated crimes, but the machinery itself.
Mark
So this is a film made by Israelis, about Israeli military systems, shown at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals. Why does that matter?
Mimi
Because it's testimony from inside the system itself. These aren't external observers or critics—they're the people who operated the surveillance, who identified the targets, who watched the systems work. That's a different kind of evidence.
Luke
But we should be careful here. These are 24 people who agreed to talk, anonymously, to filmmakers. We don't know how representative they are of the broader military, or what their motivations were for speaking.
Mark
The directors say some expressed remorse and some didn't. What does that tell us?
Mimi
It tells us there's no single narrative inside the military about what happened. Some people seem to have grappled with it, some haven't. But they all described the same systems—the AI targeting, the phone hacking, the knowledge that families would be killed.
Luke
Right, but "described" is doing a lot of work there. We're relying on the filmmakers' editing and framing of what these people said. We don't have the full interviews. We don't know what questions weren't asked.
Mark
The film focuses on systems and orders rather than individual war crimes. Why is that distinction important?
Mimi
Because it shifts responsibility upward. It's not about a soldier who made a bad call. It's about the policies, the language, the logic that made those practices possible and acceptable. That's institutional.
Luke
And that's what the directors claim. But the film is competing for an award, which means it's also a work of art with editorial choices. We should know that the version we're seeing has been shaped by the filmmakers' perspective.
Mark
Over 73,000 Palestinians have been killed. Does a documentary change anything?
Mimi
It creates a record. It puts these testimonies on film, at a major festival, in a way that's harder to dismiss or forget. It also validates the earlier reporting by the Guardian and +972 Magazine.
Luke
It might. Or it might be seen as important by some audiences and ignored by others. We don't know yet what the actual impact will be. What we know is that it exists, it was made, and people responded to it.
El Pulso
- Twenty-four Israeli intelligence officers and military operatives agreed to describe, on camera, the AI-driven targeting systems used to bomb Palestinian homes at night — knowing families would die alongside the intended targets.
- The film documents not rogue soldiers but institutional policy: systematic burning of civilian homes, killings at food distribution sites, and a secret unit whose stated mission was to 'thwart peace.'
- Its Venice premiere drew a standing ovation reported as the longest in major international film festival history — nearly 25 minutes — with audience members raising Palestinian flags as the directors embraced.
- The documentary was produced under tight security, its contents kept secret until the premiere, representing the culmination of years of joint investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call.
- With over 73,000 Palestinians killed, a man-made famine underway, and three-quarters of Gaza's homes destroyed, the film lands into a landscape already described by the UN and human rights organizations as genocide.
At the Venice Film Festival, a documentary called NAZA — named after an Israeli military acronym for civilians expected to die in strikes — premiered as the only Golden Lion contender built entirely on testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders. Directed by the Oscar-winning team behind No Other Land and produced by the Guardian, the film does not allege aberrations but describes a deliberate architecture: AI systems selecting targets, families bombed in their sleep, phones hacked to hear final conversations. It arrives as more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, and as international bodies have begun using the word genocide — a moment when the question before humanity is not only what happened, but how systems of language and logic made it possible.
At the Venice International Film Festival, a documentary called NAZA premiered as the only film competing for the Golden Lion built entirely on testimony from Israeli military insiders. The title comes from an Israeli military acronym — a bureaucratic euphemism for civilians expected to die in a strike. Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2025 for No Other Land, and produced by the Guardian alongside executive producer Jonathan Glazer, the film represents years of investigation distilled into a single, devastating account.
Twenty-four Israeli officers and intelligence operatives agreed to speak anonymously, filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops with their faces and voices digitally altered. What they described was a system: AI-based tools used to identify large numbers of low-ranking Hamas targets, whose homes were then bombed at night with the knowledge that sleeping families would be killed alongside them. The military hacked phones to pinpoint locations and listened to conversations between targets and their wives and children in the moments before strikes. The film also documents the systematic burning of civilian homes, operations in neighborhoods where up to a quarter of residents were estimated to still be sheltering, and killings at a food distribution site. Several interviewees worked in a secret unit reporting directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu's office; one described their mission as working to 'thwart peace.'
The directors were deliberate in framing what the film is and is not about. It is not a record of individual soldiers acting outside orders — it is, in their words, about 'the orders themselves, the policies, the accepted practices, the language and logic that make those practices possible.' When Abraham asked officers to simply describe what they had done and how the systems worked, some answered with indifference, some with pride, and some with remorse. 'Sometimes, in just asking the questions, you get the answers,' he said at a press conference.
The premiere drew a standing ovation of nearly 25 minutes — reported as a record for any major international film festival. The film arrives against a backdrop of staggering scale: more than 73,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023, the majority civilians; over 174,000 injured; a man-made famine created by Israeli food restrictions; and more than three-quarters of Gaza's homes razed or damaged. The UN and major human rights organizations have characterized the operations as genocide. Israel launched its campaign following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in 251 being taken hostage. NAZA does not adjudicate that history — it asks, with the voices of those who built the machinery, how a system comes to work the way it does.
On Thursday at the Venice International Film Festival, a documentary premiered that would become the only film competing for the festival's most prestigious award—the Golden Lion—to center entirely on testimony from Israeli military insiders describing the systems used to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The film is called NAZA, a title drawn from an Israeli military acronym used as a euphemism for civilians expected to die in a military operation. It was directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the same Israeli filmmakers who co-directed No Other Land, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2025. The Guardian produced it alongside executive producer Jonathan Glazer, whose previous documentary, The Zone of Interest, also won an Oscar.
Twenty-four Israeli military officers and intelligence operatives agreed to be interviewed for the film, speaking on condition of anonymity. They were filmed at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, their faces and voices digitally altered to protect their identities. What they described, in their own words, was the machinery of mass killing. The Israeli military, according to their testimony, deployed AI-based systems to identify large numbers of low-ranking Hamas targets, then bombed their homes at night—knowing that families sleeping inside would be killed alongside them. The military hacked into phones to pinpoint locations and listened to conversations between targets and their wives and children in the moments before the strikes. The film also documents accounts of neighborhoods where the military estimated up to 25 percent of residents remained sheltering indoors, the systematic burning of civilian homes, and killings at a food distribution site.
Several of the interviewees worked in a secret intelligence unit reporting directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. One described their mission as working to "thwart peace." When asked by the directors how these systems functioned, some officers answered with indifference, some with pride, and some with expressions of remorse. Abraham explained at a press conference that the filmmakers simply asked the officers to describe what they had done and sketch out how the systems worked. "Sometimes, in just asking the questions, you get the answers," he said.
The directors emphasized in their statement that the film was not about isolated war crimes committed by individual soldiers acting outside orders. "It is on the orders themselves, the policies, the accepted practices, the language and logic that make those practices possible, and the people who operate within them," they wrote. "The system and its cogs." They framed the documentary as an extension of their previous work documenting Palestinian displacement in the West Bank, but this time focused on what they called a system of mass killing in Gaza.
The film's premiere drew a standing ovation lasting nearly 25 minutes—a length that trade publications reported as a record not only for Venice but for any major international film festival. Jonathan Glazer embraced the directors as the applause continued, while some audience members held Palestinian flags. Alberto Barbera, the festival's artistic director, had told journalists beforehand that NAZA would be "truly groundbreaking" and "politically disruptive," noting that it took three years to convince the Israeli military and intelligence officials to participate.
The documentary builds on investigations published between 2023 and 2025 by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and the Guardian. It was produced under tight security to protect the sources involved, and its contents remained secret until the Venice premiere. Paul Lewis, the Guardian's head of investigations and an executive producer on the film, described it as the culmination of "years of painstaking work to uncover and verify the systems used by Israeli military intelligence in Gaza."
The broader context is stark. Israeli military operations in Gaza since October 2023 have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, and injured more than 174,000 others—together representing more than 10 percent of Gaza's prewar population. Israeli restrictions on food shipments created a man-made famine. More than three-quarters of homes have been razed or damaged, leaving surviving Palestinians crowded into tent camps with minimal access to clean water or sanitation. The UN and major human rights organizations have characterized these operations as genocide. Israel launched its military campaign after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in 251 people being taken to Gaza as hostages, the majority of them civilians.
Citas Notables
Sometimes, in just asking the questions, you get the answers.— Yuval Abraham, director, at Venice press conference
It is on the orders themselves, the policies, the accepted practices, the language and logic that make those practices possible, and the people who operate within them. The system and its cogs.— Abraham and Szor, directors' statement
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