JERUSALEM — Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar has said that he will move to strip Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of their citizenship over their award-winning documentary “NAZA”.
The documentary about Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza won Venice’s Special Jury Prize.
In an X post on Sunday, Zohar called the documentary “vile” and its win at the film festival “shocking”. He accused the filmmakers of harming the country “just to get applause from antisemites around the world”.
One of the most talked-about and celebrated films of this year’s Venice Film Festival is NAZA – the new film by Israeli No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and the only documentary to be selected to this year’s main competition.
It shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis.
The 80-minute hot-button doc, shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv during the ongoing Gaza war, features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers, soldiers and whistleblowers.
They discuss how Palestinians are targeted – hence the title of the film, a military acronym used by Israeli Military Forces to refer to the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike in Gaza. It stands for “Nezek Agavi”: collateral damage.
During Saturday’s award ceremony, NAZA won the Special Jury Prize. Only a day later, Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar announced that he would “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship” of the directing duo, directly equating criticism of Israel’s actions to antisemitism.
According to a translation provided by X, Zohar called NAZA “vile” and the Venice Film Festival honor “shocking,” adding: “The self-loathing that burns in the creators, who are willing to harm their homeland just to get applause from antisemites around the world, is inconceivable and constitutes a betrayal of the state.”
He added, “This is exactly the reason I led the important reform in cinema so that Israeli citizens will no longer have to pay from their own pockets for the harm to IDF soldiers and the State of Israel. As Minister of Culture, I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for betraying the state.”
“You are a disgrace and an embarrassment to the entire people of Israel. Go away!” the far-right Minister of National Security of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, added on X. “I am certain that your friends, that is to say our enemies Hamas in Gaza, will welcome you with open arms.”
NAZA received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation during its Venice premiere. Previously, the record was held by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza-set The Voice of Hind Rajab, about the death of a 6-year-old girl killed by Israeli military fire while attempting to flee Gaza City with her family. The film, which premiered last year in Venice and was one of Euronews Culture’s Best Movies of 2025, elicited a 22-minute standing ovation.
As opposed to Zohar and Ben-Gvir, some have praised NAZA and its directors. The former lawmaker Yousef Jabareen, chair of the left-wing Hadash party, congratulated the directors on the award, thanking them for exposing “these horrific crimes and the brutal reality in Gaza”.
Additionally, the Haaretz newspaper wrote in an editorial: “By screening their film at the Venice film festival, Abraham and Szor are trying to force Israelis to confront what they already know: that there’s a black stain on the way Israel is conducting war in Gaza, to put it mildly.”
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s previous film, No Other Land, was released in 2024 and followed Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
Organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have described Israel’s actions as “genocide”, as well as a report published in June by a UN independent commission which found that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank.”
NAZA builds on reporting between 2023 and 2025 published by the Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and The Guardian. The documentary will screen in Spain at San Sebastián International Film Festival on 23 September and then at New York Film Festival on 26 September.
No official theatrical release date has been announced, but French distribution company MK2 Films is handling world sales rights.
Source: Saudi Gazette