“NAZA,” the new documentary from “No Other Land” directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, earned a massive 24.5-minute ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere on Thursday.
This marks the longest-ever standing ovation in Venice, besting the 22 minutes for “The Voice of Hind Rajab” last year, and seemingly the longest at a major film festival, period.
Oscar-winning “Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, who is an executive producer on the film, embraced Abraham and Szor and cheered them on throughout the astounding applause. The directing duo both got teary-eyed at points, wiping their eyes while audience members held up Palestinian flags.
The film shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis. The hot-button doc, which was shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, features revelatory interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers.“NAZA,” a term that appears throughout the documentary, is an acronym for collateral damage used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike.
Abraham and Szor were two of the four directors of “No Other Land,” which won the 2025 best documentary Oscar and depicts the Israeli government’s efforts to force Palestinians from their homes in the southern West Bank.
