“Naza,” a documentary from two of the four co-directors of the Oscar-winning “No Other Land,” received a 25-minute standing ovation at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday, an AFP journalist present in the theater confirmed — the longest ovation in the festival’s history.
The film, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, screened in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema as the sole documentary in this year’s competition lineup, a late addition announced by festival organizers in late August. Jonathan Glazer, director of the Oscar-winning “The Zone of Interest,” is an executive producer on the film. As the ovation continued, festival director Alberto Barbera joined in and warmly embraced both directors, while audience members unfurled Palestinian flags and, in a few cases, Lebanese flags.
According to the film’s official synopsis, it “reveals in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” Shot at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, the 80-minute documentary is built around interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers.
At a news conference ahead of the screening, Mr. Abraham described the filmmakers’ approach to those interviews: “We just told these officers and soldiers, please describe to us what you did,” he said.
“Naza” builds on investigative reporting Mr. Abraham conducted between 2023 and 2025 for the Israeli-Palestinian outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, along with The Guardian, which produced the film alongside James Wilson’s JW Films. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Glazer previously teamed on “The Zone of Interest.”
Mr. Abraham and Ms. Szor were two of the four directors behind “No Other Land,” which won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature for its depiction of Israeli demolitions in the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta region.
The filmmakers describe “Naza” as an inside look at what they call the systematic killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That characterization has been echoed by human rights groups — Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in a December 2024 report — and by a United Nations commission of inquiry, which concluded last September that Israel had committed genocide. Israeli officials have rejected the genocide designation as an antisemitic “blood libel.”
The previous record for a Venice ovation was set last year by “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about the death of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli fire, which ran 23 minutes, 50 seconds. That film’s director, Kaouther Ben Hania, is on this year’s Maggie Gyllenhaal-led jury, which will announce award winners Saturday.
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