A chilling new documentary about Israel’s AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza from two Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers received a 25-minute ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.
The audience clapped continuously for Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after the screening, a reporter witnessed, setting what is thought to be a new record in Venice after a 23-minute ovation for another film about Gaza last year.
In their film NAZA, Abraham and Szor used conversations with 24 different Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who spoke on condition that their identities be protected. “We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,” Abraham said.
“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 80-minute film left many audience members stunned, with interviewees describing how they felt like they worked in a killing “factory” or a lethal video game.
NAZA draws its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that are expected to be killed in an airstrike. It was described as an “urgent, gut-punch” by film magazine Screen, while The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired “outrage…indignity as well. Most certainly disgust, on a profound level, for the current Israeli regime”.
