Oscar-winning directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor premiered their new documentary, NAZA, at the Venice Film Festival on September 10. The feature documentary is sold by mk2 Films, produced by The Guardian and Jim Wilson through JW Films, and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer. The film features 24 anonymous Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers detailing the military’s use of artificial intelligence and mass surveillance to target and kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The documentary centers on the testimonies of military and intelligence insiders who helped develop and operate the systems behind airstrikes in Gaza.
Inside the AI Targeting System and the Definition of NAZA
The film’s title comes from a slang term that the Israeli military uses for collateral damage, which also indicates how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike on Gaza. The reporting notes that intelligence officers explain how the Israel Defense Forces prefer to target Hamas terrorists in their homes at night, and if they live with their family, or in heavily populated neighbourhoods, too bad. On a darkened rooftop in Tel Aviv, Israeli intelligence officers outline the details of their work, telling how they helped develop an AI mapping tool that trawled for phone signals and recommended apartment buildings in Gaza to bomb.
Interviewees in the film describe a systematic approach where every single home in Gaza was mapped already before October 7th. Strikes are designed to wait until a target enters his house and the bombing takes place there together with their families, often resulting in three generations of the family being killed, along with neighbours and everyone else. The documentary outlines that at one point, a source claims, approval was given to kill 500 NAZA for one Hamas member. Many of these men work remotely from Tel Aviv where AI selects the target and a drone drops the bomb.
Motivations of the 24 Anonymous Intelligence Insiders
Finding confidential sources wasn’t easy and took a long time before they agreed to speak. The documentary relies on the accounts of 24 anonymized military and intelligence personnel who were interviewed on rooftops in nighttime Tel Aviv.
When asked about the psychological state of the interviewees, Abraham explained to reporters that motivations varied widely across the group.
“Some people talk because they feel the opposite of shame. They feel pride in their accomplishment and expertise.”
Yuval Abraham
Other sources had different motivations, with some acting out of a feeling of shame at what they had done and a feeling that what they had done shouldn’t remain only in their heads but should be public knowledge. Intelligence officers are, we are told in the film, Israel’s social elite, and the anonymous interviewees are articulate and intelligent, and in some cases, mass killers.
Production Background and Executive Production Support
The project represents an interaction between film and journalism, working alongside The Guardian and Israeli news sites +972 Magazine and Local Call to take the rigour of journalism alongside the storytelling power of cinema. The directors previously won an Oscar for their 2024 documentary No Other Land, which they co-directed with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, spotlighting Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank.
Jonathan Glazer, the director of The Zone of Interest, executive produced the project after hosting a Q&A for the filmmakers’ previous work. Glazer supported the structure and creative approach Szor and Abraham had adopted, fostering the sense of a home that sits next door to hell. One phrase Glazer used in a talk at the New York Film Festival about his Holocaust-themed feature influenced the directors’ thinking around this project, specifically when he said his film was one where the victims are out of sight but never out of mind.
Distribution and Reception Prospects in Israel
The filmmakers expressed hope that the documentary will be shown in Israel and Israeli society will see it and have some response to it, though it is hard to tell how it will be received back home. Szor noted that while past investigative allegations in newspapers about war crimes in Gaza were simply denied by the IDF spokesman, having people speaking about it in Hebrew and on camera in Tel Aviv might hopefully make it a bit harder for the Israelis to ignore it. Large swathes of Israeli society still believe there are no innocent people in Gaza, and that the entire population was somehow complicit in the October 7 atrocities.
