# Inside NAZA, where Israel's own officers describe Gaza > Two Israeli directors spent three years filming 24 military officers on Tel Aviv rooftops, describing how the machine that kills Gaza's civilians actually works. - Title: Inside NAZA, where Israel's own officers describe Gaza - Summary: Two Israeli directors spent three years filming 24 military officers on Tel Aviv rooftops, describing how the machine that kills Gaza's civilians actually… - Keywords: documentary, gaza, investigative journalism, venice film festival, israel, Inside, NAZA, where, Israel's, own, officers, describe - Source: The Hollywood Reporter — https://hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/inside-naza-bombshell-expose-documentary-on-idf-war-in-gaza-1236698734 - Author: Scott Roxborough - Published: 2026-09-13T10:00:00+00:00 - Read time: 4 min - Topics: documentary, gaza, investigative journalism, venice film festival, israel ## A prize and a firestorm NAZA took a Special Jury Prize at Venice and drew a 25-minute standing ovation, the longest the festival has recorded. Jonathan Glazer executive produced. Mk2 Films is selling it worldwide. ## Twenty four officers speak The film is built from testimony by 24 Israeli military officers who lay out the systems and protocols they say Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. ## The title is their own word NAZA is an acronym the Israeli military uses as shorthand for civilian casualties. Directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor took the army's internal term and made it the name of the film. ## Shot on rooftops at night Abraham and Szor filmed secretly over three years, interviewing officers after dark on Tel Aviv rooftops. VFX alters the voices and faces so the speakers cannot be identified. ## Hacking a girl's phone One officer describes breaking into the phone of a 12-year-old girl to learn when her father, a target, was home, then ordering the strike that killed the whole family. ## Snipers at the food line Another describes snipers shooting Palestinian civilians as they scrambled toward a food distribution site, matching what Palestinians had been filming at the GHF sites for months. ## The IDF rejects it all The army says it categorically rejects the allegations and attacks the use of anonymous testimony as unverifiable, repeating that it hits military targets and tries to spare civilians. > the IDF strikes military targets and makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to civilians ## Journalism first, film second It grew out of Abraham's investigations with The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call between 2023 and 2025 into Israeli targeting systems and mass surveillance of Palestinians. ## Months, sometimes years Sources took months or years to agree to a camera. They understood they were exposing state crimes, and one says on film that he hides his identity for fear of imprisonment. ## Gaza is sealed off Israel still bars international journalists from Gaza, leaving the reporting to Palestinian journalists. Around 200 of them have been killed. > much of the burden is placed on Palestinian journalists, who have been killed ## Why it took two dozen The film argues that striking family homes is designed into the system, not an error. Making a claim that heavy stick, Abraham says, required a large group of independent sources. ## Palestinians said it first Abraham insists none of this needed soldiers to confirm it. Palestinians documented the killings from day one, and the evidence was visible to anyone willing to look. > You don't have to be a genius to realize that when children come into hospitals with sniper wounds ## Testimony aimed at deniers Insider voices exist because denial in Israel, the US and Germany keeps the killing going. The point is to reach people who reject the filmmakers' conclusions. ## Nobody had asked them Szor says motives varied, from a sense of responsibility to open pride. What united them was that Israeli media never puts these soldiers on a stage. > It's really like a secret topic, especially the intelligence around it, no one really talks about it. ## Out of sight, never out of mind Glazer's The Zone of Interest shaped the form. The camera stays in Tel Aviv with the perpetrators, and the victims are absent from the frame but never from the film's reason for existing. > the victims were out of sight, but they were never out of mind for a second ## The tool called Where's Daddy A system spies on a target's relatives, waits for word that he has come home, and is built to strike the family house at night while everyone sleeps. ## Not human shields Officers concede Hamas used human shields in some cases, but say most civilian deaths at home come from how the targeting works, with AI helping pick the targets. > civilian spaces are routinely bombed by design ## 2,900 families erased These methods predate October 7 but were pushed to an extreme afterward. The arithmetic result, Abraham says, was foreseeable and foreseen. > more than 2,900 families in Gaza, multiple generations, were just completely erased ## Just ask the question From 100 hours of footage, every claim in the film was heard from multiple people. Abraham says no pressure was needed, only the question of what they did. > Because the truth of what happened in Gaza is so horrible, just asking is sometimes enough. ## American weapons, American bill Since October 7 the US has sent $21.7 billion in arms. Abraham wants Americans to hear Israeli officers describe how those weapons were used, and hopes a mainstream distributor takes it. > This is all being done thanks to the support of the United States ## Key takeaway NAZA's claim is not that Gaza's civilian deaths were tragic accidents, but that the targeting systems were built to produce them, and the people who ran those systems now say so on camera.