Gaza Herald –NAZA, a documentary exposing Israeli military and intelligence systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, has won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
Directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by The Guardian and JW Films, the documentary received the award Saturday at the conclusion of the festival in Venice, Italy.
Abraham and Szor were among the four directors of No Other Land, the documentary about Palestinian displacement in the occupied West Bank that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2025.
NAZA premiered at Venice on September 10 and received a standing ovation lasting about 25 minutes.
The documentary draws on testimony from 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders who describe surveillance, artificial intelligence and targeting systems used during Israel’s war on Gaza. Their identities and voices were digitally concealed, with interviews conducted secretly at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv over three years.
The title NAZA refers to an Israeli military intelligence acronym used to indicate the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike.
According to testimony presented in the film, Israeli intelligence systems were used to identify large numbers of suspected Hamas targets, including low-ranking members, who could then be attacked in their homes despite the anticipated presence of family members and other civilians.
The documentary argues that the mass killing of Palestinian civilians was not simply the result of isolated mistakes, but was enabled by military systems and policies governing surveillance, target selection and acceptable civilian casualties.
Abraham used the film’s appearance at Venice to highlight the role of Palestinian journalists in documenting Israel’s attacks from the beginning, stressing that Palestinians had already exposed much of what Israeli military insiders recount in the documentary.
The filmmakers said they used their position as Israelis to investigate the systems behind the killing of Palestinian civilians and to bring testimony from within Israel’s military establishment to international audiences.
The Special Jury Prize gives NAZA one of the major honors of this year’s Venice Film Festival, bringing its examination of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, and the Palestinian civilian toll, to one of the world’s most prominent cinema stages.
This report was produced in the Gaza Herald newsroom.
