‘They know the house they are bombing is full of children’: NAZA’s directors on their devastating film about Israeli intelligence
The Israeli film-makers Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham have made NAZA, a documentary compiling testimony from 24 anonymised Israeli military and intelligence insiders who helped build and operate an AI-driven system for targeting homes in Gaza. Produced by the Guardian and competing for the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, the film matters because it exposes, in the insiders' own words, how a bureaucratic, technology-driven process distanced individuals from responsibility for what the directors present as mass civilian casualties sanctioned at the highest levels of government.
The film takes its title from an intelligence acronym used to estimate expected civilian deaths in a strike, with one source alleging approval was given to kill 500 such "NAZA" for a single Hamas member; the Gaza health ministry says more than 73,000 people have died in three years of Israeli bombardment, most of them civilians. Szor and Abraham, who won an Oscar for 2024's No Other Land, said this film is deliberately bleaker, contrasting the normality of Tel Aviv life with the destruction in Gaza, and was executive produced by Jonathan Glazer, director of The Zone of Interest, who advised on its structure.
- New documentary NAZA gathers testimony from 24 Israeli intelligence insiders.
- Film explores AI-assisted targeting system and its civilian death toll.
- It is competing for the Golden Lion at Venice film festival.