A documentary examining Israel’s use of artificial intelligence in military operations in Gaza received a 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday, in what was described as a record response at the festival.
NAZA, directed by Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on conversations with 24 Israeli military and intelligence whistle-blowers whose identities have been protected. The 80-minute film examines the systems used to identify and strike targets in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
“We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,” Abraham told Agence France-Presse. “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 interviewees, filmed at night with their faces and voices digitally altered, describe what they experienced as a technologically driven system of warfare. Some compare their work to a “factory” or a video game, while others describe the destruction of civilian homes and what they saw as disregard for war and humanitarian laws.
A central focus of the film is an AI-powered system known as “Lavender”, which the filmmakers say was used to identify people for assassination. According to the interviewees, the system drew on information from mass surveillance of Gaza, including telephone calls, movements and interactions.
“The system’s parameters are so complex, it’s hard to understand,” one interviewee who said he worked on the system told the filmmakers.
The film also examines the use of the term “NAZA”, described as a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians expected to be killed in an air strike. According to the testimony presented in the documentary, suspected Hamas members could be mapped through their mobile phones, with attacks extending to buildings where they lived.
The documentary comes amid the continuing war in Gaza, where around 73,500 Palestinians have been killed and 174,500 wounded since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the United Nations considers reliable. The conflict followed the 7 October attack by Hamas militants, in which 1,219 people were killed according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on official figures.
Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians and accuses Hamas of operating among the population of the densely packed and besieged enclave, where around two million people lived before the war.
The filmmakers say the documentary was the product of a nearly three-year investigation and was intended to expose how the targeting systems operated. Abraham said the motivations of the people who spoke to them varied, with some seeking to challenge what he described as denial inside Israel, while others simply wanted to talk about their experiences.
The film has also confronted the question of historical memory. Abraham, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, said the documentary should not be understood as equating the Holocaust with Gaza, but argued that patterns of dehumanisation could still be examined through the lens of human rights.
NAZA was produced by Britain’s Jim Wilson, with executive producer Jonathan Glazer, the team behind the Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest, and with assistance from Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
The film is the only documentary in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which concludes on Saturday. Its 25-minute ovation surpassed the 23-minute response received by The Voice of Hind Rajab last year, a film about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces.
Ovations are an imperfect measure of a film’s reception, but the response to NAZA provided a striking indication of its impact on festival audiences and critics. Screen described it as an “urgent, gut-punch”, while The Hollywood Reporter said it provoked outrage, indignity and profound disgust towards the current Israeli government.
Abraham and Szor said they hoped the film would encourage Western countries to reconsider their support for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions. “Those of us inside Israel and Palestine trying to fight for change, need it,” Abraham said. “You are weakening the people inside who are supporting human rights and a political solution by refusing to act.”
With foreign journalists prevented from independently reporting from Gaza except under tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military, the filmmakers present NAZA as an attempt to document the conflict through the testimony of those who participated in its military system.
