Saturday, 24 October 2026 at 9 pm
NAZA
Directed by: Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
UK / 2026 / 80'
Language: Hebrew, English
Subtitles: English
During secret night-time meetings on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, 24 members of the Israeli military and intelligence services anonymously testify about the mass surveillance systems, algorithmic targeting and decision-making that are behind Israel's killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Their testimonies reveal the mechanisms of military action in which human lives are reduced to statistics, and the use of artificial intelligence and sophisticated technologies enables the automation and bureaucratisation of violence.
NAZA, the new film by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four creators of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land (2024), is based on years of journalistic investigations published in The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call. Transcending the boundaries of investigative journalism, NAZA explores the relationship between testimony, silence, and responsibility, seeking to expose not only individual perpetrators but also the political, technological, and social structures that enable systemic violence. The film's title is derived from the Hebrew military acronym nezek agavi, or “collateral damage”, which is used by Israeli intelligence services to denote the estimated number of civilians who will be killed in a particular airstrike.
Director's Statement:
"We made this film out of a sense of responsibility to use our position as Israelis to investigate the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible. Over the past three years of filming, we found ourselves asking the same questions that were asked by the generation of our grandparents, and throughout the entire 20th century: how does one group of people allow for the complete dehumanisation of another? What does the inner workings of such a system look like?"
Festivals and awards:
Venice Film Festival 2026 – Official Competition, Special Jury Prize, Green Drop Award, Edipo Re Award (Ca' Foscari Student Jury), Special Mention Cinema for UNICEF / San Sebastián International Film Festival 2026 – Perlak / New York Film Festival 2026 – Main Slate
Critics and reviews:
‘As a piece of filmmaking, it is exemplary. As a piece of journalism, indisputable. As a document, an indictment.’ – John Bleasdale, Time Out
‘Although this information was already known, this eighty-minute film presents it in an exceptionally powerful way.’ – David Katz, Cineuropa
‘A harrowing and immensely important work of investigative journalism.’ – Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine