Israeli film on Gaza receives 25-minute ovation at Venice premiere

Venice Film Festival honours NAZA, an exposure connected Israel’s usage of AI systems successful Gaza, with a lengthy lasting ovation.

A movie documenting Israel’s usage of AI-powered systems to people Palestinians successful Gaza has received a 25-minute lasting ovation astatine its premiere astatine the Venice Film Festival.

The 80-minute film, NAZA, was directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who won an Oscar successful 2025 for No Other Land, a documentary connected Israeli settler pogroms successful the occupied West Bank, made with Palestinian co-directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal.

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The effect of a astir three-year investigation, the movie is built connected grounds from Israeli subject and quality sources who spoke connected the information that their identities beryllium concealed. Their voices and faces were digitally altered, and they were filmed astatine nighttime connected Tel Aviv rooftops.

“We are letting the soldiers and the officers talk astir what they did,” Abraham told the AFP quality agency. “The extremity was precise simple: we wanted to hear, successful arsenic overmuch item arsenic possible, however the systems of sidesplitting successful Gaza looked, however they operated,” helium added.

The film’s rubric is simply a Hebrew quality euphemism utilized to bespeak the fig of civilians expected to beryllium killed successful a fixed aerial strike. Interviewees picture an AI-assisted strategy known arsenic “Lavender”, which drew connected Gaza’s monitored telecommunications web – telephone calls, movements and interactions – to place assassination targets.

“It was done connected a wide scale, similar a factory,” 1 interviewee says successful the film, portion different progressive successful identifying targets says the process is “like a video game, due to the fact that everything is done remotely” and is “insanely fun”.

Smoke and occurrence emergence aft an Israeli onslaught connected a location successful Khan Younis, confederate Gaza, connected September 9, 2026 [Bashar Taleb/AFP]

Some interviewees spoke astir the demolition of civilian homes, disregard for humanitarian law and a “general atmosphere” of “hatred” towards Palestinians.

“There tin beryllium nary denying what quality unit knew”, subject sources successful the movie revealed, adding that they “witnessed with their ain eyes and ears that the homes they were ‘incriminating’ were filled with families”.

Abraham said helium hoped the movie would propulsion Western governments to driblet their backing for Israel and use unit done sanctions.

“Those of america wrong Israel and Palestine trying to combat for alteration request it. You are weakening the radical wrong who are supporting quality rights and a governmental solution by refusing to act,” helium told AFP, referring to Israel’s backers.

Writing jointly successful +972 Magazine, Abraham and Szor said the movie concluded that the sidesplitting of Palestinian civilians successful Gaza “was not a ‘tragic byproduct’ of a warfare against Hamas… but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act”.

Screen International, a UK-based commercialized work covering the planetary movie industry, described the movie arsenic an “urgent, gut-punch”, portion The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired “outrage… indignity arsenic well. Most surely disgust, connected a profound level, for the existent Israeli regime”.

The movie was produced by the UK’s Jim Wilson with The Guardian, with enforcement shaper Jonathan Glazer – the squad down The Zone of Interest, which won the 2024 Oscar for champion planetary feature.

Israel’s genocidal warfare connected Gaza has killed astir 73,500 Palestinians and wounded 174,500 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Foreign journalists person been barred from entering Gaza but nether tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military.

NAZA is the lone documentary successful contention astatine this year’s festival, which concludes connected Saturday, and follows past year’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, which received a 23-minute ovation and went connected to triumph Venice’s 2nd prize.