Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s NAZA became the talk of the Venice Film Festival after its world premiere in the Sala Grande drew a 25-minute standing ovation, a response the source material identifies as a new record for any film at a major festival.
The documentary, which screened in Venice with Abraham and Szor in attendance, was also represented in the room by executive producer Jonathan Glazer. The reception places NAZA ahead of the near 24-minute ovation recorded by The Voice of Hind Rajab at last year’s Venice festival and the 22-minute response for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. It also stands as the longest ovation at this year’s Venice.
The moment inside the Sala Grande carried a charged atmosphere beyond the length of the applause. As the lights came up, members of the audience began unfurling Palestinian flags, along with one or two Lebanese flags. At one point, security guards appeared as though they might intervene.
Abraham and Szor looked solemn as the applause continued for a film that, according to the supplied source material, examines the targeting of civilians in Gaza in missile strikes by the Israeli military through testimony from intelligence personnel and soldiers involved in the killing.
A Venice premiere with major festival echoes
The film’s Venice reception also connected NAZA to another recent festival flashpoint. Kaouther Ben Hania, director of The Voice of Hind Rajab, was in the room for the premiere, as was that film’s producer Nadim Cheikhrouha. Ben Hania is serving on the jury this year.
Also present was NAZA producer James Wilson of JW Films, who also took credits on The Voice of Hind Rajab. Wilson and Glazer are identified in the source material as the Oscar-winning team behind The Zone of Interest.
For Abraham and Szor, NAZA follows their prior collaboration with two Palestinian filmmakers on the Oscar-winning No Other Land. The new documentary arrived in Venice after receiving very strong early notices from critics, according to the source material.
What NAZA examines
The film’s synopsis states: “Shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, the film reveals in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
The title NAZA is described in the source material as a military acronym used euphemistically by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. The acronym appears throughout the documentary.
In a statement, Abraham and Szor said they made the film “out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israelis to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible.”
The filmmakers continued: “While filming over the past three years, we found ourselves asking the very questions that were asked by our grandparents’ generation and throughout the 20th century: how does one group of people allow the total dehumanisation of another? What do the inner workings of such a system look like?”
Their statement added: “The film lets us explore something deeper than we could in our investigative journalism alone: not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence.”
Mk2 is handling sales on NAZA.