A late addition to this year’s Venice Film Festival competition line-up, Naza is a sickeningly tough film to watch.
Immediately, thoughts turn to last year’s festival, when Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania arrived with The Voice of Hind Rajab, her dramatisation of a Palestinian girl’s cry for help under Israeli fire that incorporates recordings of her voice.
The film went on to win Venice’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and to earn an Oscar nomination. Don’t be surprised if Naza goes further.
Digging into the actions of Israeli intelligence services, Naza is a more traditional documentary than Ben Hania’s hybrid film, though no less powerful for it. Made with the backing of British newspaper The Guardian, it brings together filmmakers with formidable credentials.
Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the co-directors of the Academy Award-winning No Other Land, direct. James Wilson produces and Jonathan Glazer executive produces – the pair behind the startling Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest.
Largely filmed on rooftops in Tel Aviv at night, the set-up is simple enough: a series of anonymous figures, cast in shadow, are interviewed about their participation in the systematic destruction of Gaza.
Appearances and voices have been changed to protect sources, we’re told, before one interviewee explains what Naza means – a military term for civilian collateral damage during air strikes. If a building was bombed, killing 15 civilians, that would be “15 Naza” – words such as “women and children” are never used.
“Twenty Naza became a benchmark,” says one, explaining that this was considered an acceptable number of civilian deaths in an attack as the Israeli military hunted down suspected Hamas operatives. The highest number he can recall was approval for 500 civilians to be killed in an attack on one target.
“It’s so insanely fun,” says another, recalling that his hormones were going crazy. He describes an atmosphere in which no one objected to the slaughter and completing the mission was all that mattered. One interviewee admits to intentionally killing civilians, including children.
Some interviewees aim to rationalise their behaviour. “My role is entirely technical,” says one. Another, who helped develop the artificial intelligence system Lavender, used to target suspected Hamas operatives, admits he was “uncomfortable”.
But then he shrugs: “If I hadn’t been there, someone else would’ve done it.” Asked whether it is genocide, one interviewee answers “yes” without hesitation.
The testimonies unfold against the Tel Aviv skyline, with its glittering skyscrapers and plush Kempinski hotel, leaving the viewer with a stomach-sinking feeling as the talk turns to “flattening” Gaza.
Some stories are almost too much to bear, such as the account of snipers shooting Palestinians as they gathered near food distribution sites. Comparisons are made to playing a video game, with the targets never seen as human.
There are moments of reflection. One person says he always viewed the Nazis as pure evil before questioning what that makes him. A clip is shown of a tribute to Claude Lanzmann, the French filmmaker behind the landmark Holocaust documentary Shoah.
Another reference is made to Eye in the Sky, Gavin Hood’s 2015 film with Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul about drone warfare. Naza is that film writ large.
Naza shows how Israeli forces applied the technology of modern warfare to destroy Gaza, and how participants were drawn into the killing, believing no one in Gaza was innocent.
Reflecting on the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, one admits they were “outsmarted”. “We were very angry.” Another describes the scale of the destruction: “We erased history.”
