The film “NAZA” grew out of a sense of duty. “We felt obligated to obtain testimony revealing the mechanisms of the killing system used in the Gaza Strip,” say Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The documentary, which won the special jury prize in Venice, opens in theaters Friday.
“NAZA” is an acronym used in the Israeli armed forces for so-called collateral damage, meaning the number of civilians who may be killed in the course of eliminating a military target, one of Abraham and Szor’s interviewees explains on camera. The Israeli investigative journalists, co-creators of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” recorded conversations with 24 people connected to the Israeli army and intelligence who agreed, on condition of anonymity, to talk about the systems used to identify targets and carry out attacks in the Gaza Strip. The systems, aided by artificial intelligence and based on surveillance, accept the risk of high civilian casualties. The film illustrates this as follows: to kill one Hamas member, the possible deaths of 500 civilians were accepted.
Many of the details publicized in “NAZA” appeared earlier in The Guardian, which is one of the documentary’s producers. “Even if these findings were already known to the public, we decided it was worth bringing them together in a film. First of all, because they sound completely different coming from the people who designed and operated these systems. Moreover, on screen you can show things that can’t be conveyed in writing: the society in which these events take place, Tel Aviv, where the main headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces is located and where many officers live,” Rachel Szor said in September in Venice at a press conference accompanying the film’s world premiere.
Yuval Abraham noted that both of them come from journalism. “We are not filmmakers (…). But cinema makes it possible to explore the structure of systems in depth. That has to do, among other things, with the way of editing, of linking individual elements. I don’t think it is a path to learning the truth about the crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, because that truth should be, and is, obvious. It is shown by journalists’ findings and by the documentation we have all seen. As Israelis, we felt obligated to use our capabilities and obtain testimony revealing the mechanisms of the killing system,” the director said.
He and Szor had been prepared for the fact that persuading current and former members of Israeli military structures to open up would take a great deal of time. They were surprised that some of them wanted to talk from the start. In some, that willingness came with remorse; in others, quite the opposite. Some people spoke with complete indifference. “Jonathan Glazer (the documentary’s executive producer – PAP) once said something about ‘The Zone of Interest’ that stuck with me in particular. Namely, that in that story the victims are out of frame, out of sight, yet we don’t stop thinking about them for a moment. We decided that focusing on guilt would shift the film’s center of gravity. Its core was supposed to be the system as a result of which more than 70,000 Palestinians died in the Gaza Strip. That is only an estimate; the actual number of victims is much higher. We wanted to show how such a system works and how the world allowed it to happen,” Abraham said.
In September, at the Venice festival, the film received the special jury prize. In Israel it provoked a sharp reaction from the authorities. Culture Minister Miki Zohar publicly called it “despicable” and accused Abraham and Szor of “burning self-hatred.” He also announced efforts to strip the filmmakers of their Israeli citizenship for “breach of loyalty to the state and collaboration with the enemy,” as well as a request to the Interior Ministry to investigate the origin of the materials used in the film.
The Israeli army rejected the allegations presented in the documentary, pointing out that the soldiers and intelligence staff who speak in it remain anonymous, so their identities cannot be verified. The news site Ynet, meanwhile, reported that the Israeli army, the Foreign Ministry and the government unit responsible for public diplomacy (hasbara) are holding “frantic” consultations on preparing a broad information campaign against the film. It is to be conducted across various platforms, primarily digital channels.
More than a thousand Israeli filmmakers and 1,500 filmmakers from outside Israel signed a petition in defense of Szor and Abraham. The Polish Directors Guild also expressed solidarity with the Israeli filmmakers. “An artist has the right, and sometimes the duty, to ask the hardest questions and show things the authorities do not want to see. They should not be intimidated or punished for their creative expression. That is why we stand with Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, on the side of creative freedom,” said the guild’s honorary president, Agnieszka Holland, at the closing gala of the Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia.
“NAZA” is in Polish theaters starting Friday.
Daria Porycka (PAP)
