Casablanca – The 83rd Venice Film Festival witnessed a record-breaking moment as “NAZA” received a 25-minute standing ovation following its premiere, marking the longest ovation in the festival’s history.
The documentary premiered at the Sala Grande on Thursday, as part of the festival’s main competition.
Directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the film is built around testimonies from 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers about the systems and practices behind the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The audience’s response lasted for around 25 minutes, surpassing the previous Venice record set by Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which received an ovation of more than 23 minutes at its 2025 premiere.
Inside ‘NAZA’
Shot at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, the documentary examines the systems used in Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Its anonymous testimonies include accounts of AI-assisted targeting systems that use data from hacked mobile phones to identify targets.
Reuters reported that the film also addresses civilian deaths in areas designated by Israel as no-go zones, including areas near aid distribution centers. One intelligence officer described the scale of the killings as taking place on an “industrial scale.”
The title “NAZA” refers to an Israeli military term used to indicate the expected number of civilian deaths, or “collateral casualties,” in a planned airstrike.
A film born from obligation
In their directors’ statement published by La Biennale di Venezia, Abraham and Szor explained that they felt a responsibility to use their position as Israeli filmmakers to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
After filming for three years, the directors said they found themselves confronting questions about how societies allow another group to become completely dehumanized and what such systems look like from within.
They also noted that many of the film’s revelations had already appeared through investigative reporting by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call following the October 7 attacks.
For them, however, the documentary offered room to go beyond the reported words and examine the silences surrounding them, calling on audiences to confront that silence rather than look away.
A powerful reception in Venice
As the credits rolled inside the Sala Grande, audience members stood for the lengthy ovation, with Palestinian and Lebanese flags raised in the theater.
For Abraham and Szor, “NAZA” continues the investigative work behind their previous documentary “No Other Land,” which they co-directed with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal and which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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