{"id":612353,"date":"2026-09-11T02:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/612353\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T02:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:00:09","slug":"israeli-film-on-gaza-receives-25-minute-ovation-at-venice-premiere-crimes-against-humanity-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/612353\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli film on Gaza receives 25-minute ovation at Venice premiere | Crimes Against Humanity News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venice Film Festival honours NAZA, an expose on Israel\u2019s use of AI systems in Gaza, with a lengthy standing ovation.<\/p>\n

A film documenting Israel\u2019s use of AI-powered systems<\/a> to target Palestinians in Gaza has received a 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,\u201d Abraham told the AFP news agency. \u201cThe 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,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s 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 \u201cLavender\u201d, which drew on Gaza\u2019s monitored telecommunications network \u2013 phone calls, movements and interactions \u2013 to identify assassination targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was done on a mass scale, like a factory,\u201d one interviewee says in the film, while another involved in identifying targets says the process is \u201clike a video game, because everything is done remotely\u201d and is \u201cinsanely fun\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TOPSHOTSmoke and fire rise after an Israeli strike on a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on September 9, 2026 [Bashar Taleb\/AFP]<\/p>\n

Some interviewees spoke about the destruction of civilian homes, disregard for humanitarian law<\/a> and a \u201cgeneral atmosphere\u201d of \u201chatred\u201d towards Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can be no denying what intelligence personnel knew\u201d, military sources in the film revealed, adding that they \u201cwitnessed with their own eyes and ears that the homes they were \u2018incriminating\u2019 were filled with families\u201d.<\/p>\n

Abraham said he hoped the film would push Western governments to drop their backing for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose 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,\u201d he told AFP, referring to Israel\u2019s backers.<\/p>\n

Writing jointly in +972 Magazine, Abraham and Szor said the film concluded that the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza \u201cwas not a \u2018tragic byproduct\u2019 of a war against Hamas\u2026 but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act\u201d.<\/p>\n

Screen International, a UK-based trade publication covering the global film industry, described the film as an \u201curgent, gut-punch\u201d, while The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired \u201coutrage\u2026 indignity as well. Most certainly disgust, on a profound level, for the current Israeli regime\u201d.<\/p>\n

The film was produced by the UK\u2019s Jim Wilson with The Guardian, with executive producer Jonathan Glazer \u2013 the team behind The Zone of Interest, which won the 2024 Oscar for best international feature.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza has killed about 73,500 Palestinians and wounded 174,500 since October 2023, according to Gaza\u2019s Ministry of Health. Foreign journalists have been barred from entering Gaza except under tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military.<\/p>\n

NAZA is the only documentary in competition at this year\u2019s festival, which concludes on Saturday, and follows last year\u2019s The Voice of Hind Rajab, which received a 23-minute ovation and went on to win Venice\u2019s second prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venice Film Festival honours NAZA, an expose on Israel\u2019s use of AI systems in Gaza, with a lengthy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4496,1549,146,63,2226,50,2128,85,46,44,2971,47,2899,43,48,1299],"class_list":["post-612353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-documentary","tag-entertainment","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-gaza","tag-humanitarian-crises","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-italy","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-news","tag-palestine","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}