{"id":766496,"date":"2026-09-10T20:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T20:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/766496\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T20:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T20:08:13","slug":"naza-venice-premiere-gaza-documentary-earns-record-standing-ovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/766496\/","title":{"rendered":"‘NAZA’ Venice Premiere: Gaza Documentary Earns Record Standing Ovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cNAZA<\/a>,\u201d the new documentary from Israeli \u201cNo Other Land\u201d directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, earned a massive 24.5-minute ovation at its Venice Film Festival<\/a> premiere on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis marks the longest-ever standing ovation in Venice \u2014 besting the 22 minutes for \u201cThe Voice of Hind Rajab\u201d last year \u2014 and apparently the longest at a major film festival, period. With Venice coming to an end on Saturday, it will easily be the biggest ovation of this year\u2019s edition.<\/p>\n

\n\tOscar-winning \u201cZone of Interest\u201d director Jonathan Glazer, who is an executive producer on the film, embraced Abraham and Szor and cheered them on throughout the astounding applause. The directing duo looked somber and both got teary-eyed at points, as did the audience, some of whom held up Palestinian flags.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNAZA\u201d shows \u201cin detail the systems behind Israel\u2019s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,\u201d according to its official synopsis. The hot-button doc, which was shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, features revelatory interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers. \u201cNAZA,\u201d a term that appears throughout the documentary, is an acronym for collateral damage used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe doc was a late addition to Venice\u2019s competition, being added a month after the initial lineup was announced in July. The directors explained at a press conference earlier on Thursday that the last-minute nature was because they were finishing the movie, which they worked on for three years. <\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham and Szor were two of the four directors of \u201cNo Other Land,\u201d which won the 2025 best documentary Oscar and depicts the Israeli government\u2019s efforts to force Palestinians from their homes in the southern West Bank.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview with Variety <\/a>ahead of the doc\u2019s premiere, Abraham said: \u201cAs Israelis, we found ourselves wanting to use the kind of position that we have \u2014 the access that we have to people in our own society who went into the military \u2014 to look at that system as it carried out what all human rights organizations are saying is a genocide.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, which is the only documentary feature in this year\u2019s Venice\u2019s competition lineup, is produced by British newspaper The Guardian and James Wilson (JW Films) and executive produced by Glazer. Wilson and Glazer are the Oscar-winning team behind the film \u201cThe Zone of Interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania\u2019s Gaza-set \u201cThe Voice of Hind Rajab,\u201d about the death of a 6-year-old girl killed by Israeli military fire while\u00a0attempting to flee Gaza City with her family, elicited a\u00a022-minute standing ovation, which stands as the fest\u2019s longest.\u00a0Ben Hania is part of Venice\u2019s Maggie Gyllenhaal-led jury that will be selecting the award winners on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNAZA,\u201d the new documentary from Israeli \u201cNo Other Land\u201d directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, earned a massive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,247522,56,54,55,10306],"class_list":["post-766496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-naza","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}