A graffiti mural depicting Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, directors of the documentary “NAZA,” seen in Ashdod, Israel, on Sept. 16, 2026. Initially painted by an artist accusing the filmmakers of being “traitors,” the text on the mural was subsequently modified by another artist to read “heroes.”
Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images
The Israeli documentary “NAZA”
will make its North American premiere tomorrow at the New York Film Festival on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
vitriolic speech
at the United Nations, which was met by mass protests,
arrests
, and diplomats walking out. Other Israeli documentaries have screened at Lincoln Center, including one at the New York Jewish Film Festival in
January
on the movement for LGBTQ+ rights or another about an October 7 hostage. But this film, co-directed by
Yuval Abraham
and Rachel Szor, has proven extraordinarily controversial in its home country, reviled by nearly every sector of media and politics.
The documentary, which is composed of anonymous interviews with those active in Israel’s military and intelligence service during the war against Gaza, depicts extensive, highly detailed confessions of their participation in the mass targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians. The film’s title comes from the Israeli military’s system for assessing collateral damage, an interface that one of the anonymous confessors says can map out every building in the Gaza Strip and predict what civilians may be killed in an airstrike. One man who used the NAZA interface remarks in a
clip
from the film that the military once approved a single strike the system calculated would kill 500 Palestinians, and said the system makes no distinction between adults and children.
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The revelation of the film’s existence — its world premiere was at the Venice Fil
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