The Venice International Film Festival held the premiere on Thursday of “Naza,” a documentary featuring anonymised testimonies from former Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers about how targets for strikes in Gaza are identified and the use of artificial intelligence systems. The Israeli military rejected the allegations made in the film, stressing that humans make strike decisions.
The makers of “Naza” and the Golden Lion competition
The film was directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Tzur, in collaboration with the British newspaper The Guardian, which co-produced it. The film is competing for the Golden Lion after three years of investigative work and negotiations with participants.
Yuval Abraham’s testimony on the targeting system
Director Yuval Abraham said the film allows soldiers and officers to speak about what they did, explaining that its aim was to hear, in as much detail as possible, their descriptions of the killing systems in Gaza and how they operate. The directors stressed that the film focuses on orders, policies and the mechanisms governing the system, rather than isolated individual actions.
The film’s title refers to an Israeli military abbreviation used, according to the documentary, to denote the expected number of civilians who could be killed in a strike. The documentary uses the term as an entry point to examine how civilian casualties are calculated in advance as part of military decisions.
The Israeli military, for its part, said the testimonies were anonymous and could not be verified, and that the excerpts included claims about national and military strategy beyond the knowledge of soldiers at lower levels. It added that some references concerned situations in which intelligence officers were not involved. The military said it was making unprecedented efforts to limit harm to civilians, and that decisions to approve and carry out strikes were made exclusively by humans, not artificial intelligence.
The film received about 25 minutes of applause after its screening, and some attendees raised the Palestinian flag inside the auditorium. Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, described the film as “politically disruptive and cinematically compelling,” saying that persuading military and intelligence officials to tell their stories required three years of negotiations.
James Wilson co-produced the film, while Jonathan Glazer served as executive producer. The film draws on journalistic investigations published between 2023 and 2025, and continues the path Abraham and Tzur began with their previous film “No Other Land,” which addressed the destruction of homes in the West Bank.
