Israeli documentary on Gaza AI targeting earns 25-minute ovation

The eighty-minute documentary NAZA received a twenty-five-minute standing ovation during its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film documents how Israel uses artificial intelligence systems to target Palestinians in Gaza, drawing significant attention from international audiences and critics attending the prestigious event this week.

Directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the project represents the result of a nearly three-year investigation. The duo previously won an Oscar in 2025 for No Other Land, a documentary focusing on Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank made with Palestinian co-directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal.

The narrative is built on testimony from Israeli military and intelligence sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Their voices and faces were digitally altered, and they were filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops to protect their identities while revealing internal operational details of the ongoing conflict.

Abraham explained the intent behind the project, stating, “We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did.” He added that the goal was simple: to hear in detail how the systems of killing in Gaza looked and how they operated on the ground.

The title NAZA is a Hebrew intelligence euphemism indicating expected civilian deaths in an air strike. Interviewees describe an AI-assisted system called Lavender, which used monitored telecommunications data including phone calls and movements to identify assassination targets across the densely populated coastal enclave.

One interviewee described the process as being done on a mass scale like a factory. Another involved in identifying targets compared the remote operation to a video game, calling it insanely fun. Sources revealed they witnessed homes filled with families being incriminated despite knowing the humanitarian law implications.

Abraham hopes the film will push Western governments to drop backing for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions. He argued that refusing to act weakens those inside supporting human rights. The film concludes civilian killings were premeditated acts, not tragic byproducts of war against Hamas.