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

Venice Film Festival honours NAZA, an expose on Israel’s use of AI systems in Gaza, with a lengthy standing ovation.

Israeli filmmakers Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham arrive for the premiere of NAZA at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, September 10, 2026 [Ettore Ferrari/EPA]

A film documenting Israel’s use of AI-powered systems to target Palestinians in Gaza has received a 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

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

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The result of a nearly three-year investigation, the film is built on testimony from Israeli military and intelligence sources who spoke on the condition that their identities be concealed. Their voices and faces were digitally altered, and they were filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops.

“We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,” Abraham told the AFP news agency. “The goal was very simple: we wanted to hear, in as much detail as possible, how the systems of killing in Gaza looked, how they operated,” he added.

The film’s title is a Hebrew intelligence euphemism used to indicate the number of civilians expected to be killed in a given air strike. Interviewees describe an AI-assisted system known as “Lavender”, which drew on Gaza’s monitored telecommunications network – phone calls, movements and interactions – to identify assassination targets.

“It was done on a mass scale, like a factory,” one interviewee says in the film, while another involved in identifying targets says the process is “like a video game, because everything is done remotely” and is “insanely fun”.

Smoke and fire rise after an Israeli strike on a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on September 9, 2026 [Bashar Taleb/AFP]

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

“There can be no denying what intelligence personnel knew”, military sources in the film revealed, adding that they “witnessed with their own eyes and ears that the homes they were ‘incriminating’ were filled with families”.

Abraham said he hoped the film would push Western governments to drop their backing for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions.

“Those of us inside Israel and Palestine trying to fight for change need it. You are weakening the people inside who are supporting human rights and a political solution by refusing to act,” he told AFP, referring to Israel’s backers.

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

Screen International, a UK-based trade publication covering the global film industry, described the film as an “urgent, gut-punch”, while The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired “outrage… indignity as well. Most certainly disgust, on a profound level, for the current Israeli regime”.

The film was produced by the UK’s Jim Wilson with The Guardian, with executive producer Jonathan Glazer – the team behind The Zone of Interest, which won the 2024 Oscar for best international feature.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed about 73,500 Palestinians and wounded 174,500 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Foreign journalists have been barred from entering Gaza except under tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military.

NAZA is the only documentary in competition at this year’s festival, which concludes on Saturday, and follows last year’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, which received a 23-minute ovation and went on to win Venice’s second prize.

威尼斯电影节给予揭露以色列在加沙使用人工智能系统的影片《NAZA》长时间的起立鼓掌。

2026年9月10日，以色列电影人雷切尔·索尔和尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕抵达意大利威尼斯，参加第83届威尼斯电影节《纳扎》的首映式。[埃托雷·法拉利/EPA]

一部记录以色列利用人工智能系统攻击加沙巴勒斯坦人的影片在威尼斯电影节首映时获得了长达 25 分钟的起立鼓掌。

这部 80 分钟的电影《纳扎》由以色列电影人尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕和雷切尔·索尔执导，他们曾凭借纪录片《别无他处》获得 2025 年奥斯卡奖。该片讲述了以色列定居者在被占领的西岸地区遭到迫害的故事，由他们与巴勒斯坦联合导演巴塞尔·阿德拉和哈姆丹·巴拉尔共同执导。

列表 1/3 以色列永远无法阻止我为巴勒斯坦发声

《耶路撒冷日报》报道（共3条，此为第2条）：以色列空袭重创加沙

3名获得海外大学录取通知书的加沙学生名单已公布，但奖学金仍然无法兑现。

这部影片历时近三年调查，主要取材于以色列军方和情报部门人士的证词，这些人士在作证时要求匿名。他们的声音和面容都经过了数字处理，拍摄地点是特拉维夫的屋顶，时间是夜间。

“我们让士兵和军官们讲述他们的所作所为，”亚伯拉罕告诉法新社。“我们的目标很简单：我们想尽可能详细地了解加沙的杀戮体系是如何运作的，”他补充道。

影片的片名是希伯来语中一种情报委婉的说法，用来表示预计在某次空袭中丧生的平民人数。受访者描述了一个名为“薰衣草”（Lavender）的人工智能辅助系统，该系统利用加沙受监控的电信网络——包括电话通话、人员流动和互动——来识别暗杀目标。

影片中，一位受访者说：“这是大规模进行的，就像工厂一样。”另一位参与确定目标的受访者则表示，这个过程“就像玩电子游戏一样，因为一切都是远程完成的”，而且“非常有趣”。

2026年9月9日，以色列空袭加沙南部汗尤尼斯的一处房屋后，浓烟和火焰升腾。[巴沙尔·塔勒布/法新社]

一些受访者谈到平民房屋被毁、人道主义法被漠视以及对巴勒斯坦人普遍存在的“仇恨氛围”。

影片中军方消息人士透露，“情报人员所知道的事情是无可否认的”，并补充说，他们“亲眼所见、亲耳所闻，他们‘指控’的那些房子里住满了家庭”。

亚伯拉罕表示，他希望这部电影能够促使西方政府放弃对以色列的支持，并通过制裁施加压力。

“我们这些身处以色列和巴勒斯坦，努力争取变革的人需要它。你们拒绝采取行动，只会削弱那些支持人权和政治解决方案的人们的力量，”他告诉法新社，他指的是以色列的支持者。

亚伯拉罕和索尔在《+972》杂志上联合撰文称，这部电影得出的结论是，加沙巴勒斯坦平民的死亡“不是与哈马斯战争的‘悲剧性副产品’……而是预谋的、精心策划的、蓄意的行为”。

总部位于英国的全球电影行业贸易刊物《Screen International》将这部电影描述为“一记重拳，直击人心”，而《好莱坞报道》则表示，这部电影引发了“愤怒……以及愤慨。当然，也引发了人们对以色列现政权的深切厌恶”。

该片由英国的吉姆·威尔逊与《卫报》联合制作，乔纳森·格雷泽担任执行制片人——他们也是《利益区域》的幕后团队，该片曾获得 2024 年奥斯卡最佳国际影片奖。

据加沙卫生部统计，自2023年10月以来，以色列对加沙发动的种族灭绝战争已造成约73500名巴勒斯坦人死亡，174500人受伤。外国记者被禁止进入加沙，除非在以色列军方严格控制的条件下。

《纳扎》是今年电影节唯一一部入围竞赛单元的纪录片，电影节将于周六闭幕。该片是继去年的《辛德·拉贾布之声》之后的作品，《辛德·拉贾布之声》获得了 23 分钟的掌声，并最终赢得了威尼斯电影节二等奖。