NAZA

Winner of the prestigious Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival, this documentary was made by the Israeli side of the team that won the 2024 Oscar for best documentary picture with No Other Land. It focuses on the killing in Gaza this time, particularly the use of surveillance and automatic target-approval by the Israeli Defense Force. The sources (their faces obscured and voices altered to protect their identities) are soldiers and intelligence officers in the IDF. The title, NAZA, is IDF slang for “collateral damage,” and the film describes its use as a rating of how much collateral damage–civilian deaths–is acceptable in order to kill a given target. European news sources Der Spiegel and Le Monde have independently confirmed key accounts and the existence of NAZA ratings for targets. This is not an easy movie to watch, but it is an important one not just for what is happening in Gaza, but also the increasing use of dehumanization and AI in war. The film has a 100% Tomatometer and an 88% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes.

“The framing of the film then becomes a journalistic and cinematic coup, challenging us to begin to confront how easily societies (including our own) become complicit in ongoing violence.” -Chase Hutchinson, Seattle Times
“I’ve watched NAZA twice now, both times in a state of quiet horror and fury — and with enormous admiration for Abraham and Szor’s courage in holding their government to account. My admiration extends to the unerring precision of their filmmaking.” -Justin Chang, NPR
“The filmmakers of NAZA make disturbingly clear is that the simplest machinery to spread dehumanization and death is happening now, easing its users into acceptance and rewriting everything about the moral cost of conflict. It’s stone-cold frightening.” -Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
“Naza is such an effective warning. It shows how supposedly impartial data can be used to enable bloodlust.” -Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
“Through raw testimony from Israeli military personnel, NAZA is heartbreaking but essential viewing, questioning the systems that cause and quantify civilian death in modern warfare.” -Peter Howell, Toronto Star
“As a work of documentary cinema, a production that must synthesize the potency of art and the rigours of journalism, NAZA offers a devastating equation that demands attention from eyes within Israel and outside of it.” -Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail
“It’s also a reminder of the singular power of eyewitness testimony and how the act of speaking about our lives is one way we collectively try to make sense of the past, present and future. We speak, and hope that others listen.” -Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s film is an overwhelming and vital work of investigative journalism.” -Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
“The spare, focused style of Naza has a grim, artful beauty, all in service of the subject matter. The results are impossible to shake.” -Bilge Ebiri,  New York Magazine, Vulture

NAZA will play at The Clyde for a single showing on Saturday, November 7 at 2pm.