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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attacked the makers of the documentary NAZA, accusing the award-winning film of contributing to “global antisemitic incitement”.
“It’s shocking. We are fighting global antisemitic incitement and when it comes from within us it is intolerable,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on Telegram. “And now two Israeli directors portraying the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) as war criminals receive applause at the Venice festival.”
NAZA left this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Special Jury Prize and received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at the festival. It shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis.
Netanyahu’s comments follow those of Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar, who directly equated criticism of Israel’s actions to antisemitism and announced that he would “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship” of the Israeli directing duo Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
Zohar called NAZA “vile” and the Venice Film Festival honour “shocking,” adding: “The self-loathing that burns in the creators, who are willing to harm their homeland just to get applause from antisemites around the world, is inconceivable and constitutes a betrayal of the state.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also described Abraham and Szor as a “disgrace and an embarrassment” and told them to leave the country. “I am certain that your friends, that is to say our enemies Hamas in Gaza, will welcome you with open arms,” he wrote on X.
The 80-minute hot-button doc, shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv during the ongoing Gaza war, features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers, soldiers and whistleblowers. They describe how Palestinians are targeted and how strikes are carried out despite Israel being aware that civilians are present in targeted areas – hence the title of the film, a military acronym used by Israeli Military Forces to refer to the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike in Gaza. It stands for “Nezek Agavi”: collateral damage.
The participants’ faces and voices were digitally altered to protect their identities.
When accepting the Special Jury Prize, Yuval Abraham said in his acceptance speech: “We believe that the denial of a crime is what helps it persist and this is why it is especially important for us that Israelis watch this film, it is our country that is doing these crimes.”
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s previous film, No Other Land, was released in 2024 and followed Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The Gaza health ministry has reported more than 73,000 deaths in the last three years of Israeli bombardment. Organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have described Israel’s actions as “genocide” – as well as a report published in June by a UN independent commission which found that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank.”
NAZA builds on reporting between 2023 and 2025 published by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian. The documentary will screen in Spain at the San Sebastián International Film Festival on 23 September and then at the New York Film Festival on 26 September.
As of now, no official theatrical release date has been announced, but French distributor MK2 Films holds the world sales rights.