Directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor received the Venice Film Festival's Special Jury Prize for NAZA, a documentary alleging the Israeli military uses AI to target civilians in Gaza based on anonymous testimony from 24 claimed former intelligence officers. The film's claims about a 500-casualty strike and autonomous targeting systems are disputed by the IDF and fact-checkers, with casualty records and military documents contradicting the film's core allegations.
NAZA is a documentary by Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham examining the Israeli military's operations in Gaza through interviews with 24 service members who describe their roles in the conflict, using anonymized profiles and modified voices. The film critiques Israel's use of terminology like 'NAZA' (collateral damage) to dehumanize Palestinian casualties and exposes the systematic nature of military operations, including drone strikes coordinated from Tel Aviv.
Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's documentary Naza received a record 24.5-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival for its examination of how Israel selects targets for airstrikes in Gaza, featuring interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence officers about targeting systems including the AI-assisted programme Lavender. The 80-minute film, based on nearly three years of investigation, explores the scale and remote nature of target identification while concealing the identities of interviewed sources.