Israel's culture minister, Miki Zohar, has announced he will move to revoke the Israeli citizenship of filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, whose documentary NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. The film, which premiered in the main competition, is the only documentary selected for that section this year.
NAZA is an 80-minute investigation into what its synopsis calls "the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza." Shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv during the ongoing war, it features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers, soldiers, and whistleblowers. They discuss how Palestinians are targeted, with the title referring to the military acronym Nezek Agavi, meaning "collateral damage" — the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike.
Zohar's threat came just a day after the award ceremony. In a statement posted on X, he called the film "vile" and the honor "shocking," and accused the directors of "self-loathing" and "betrayal of the state." He wrote: "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 that he would "act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for betraying the state." The far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also weighed in on X, calling the directors "a disgrace and an embarrassment to the entire people of Israel," and suggesting that Hamas would welcome them.
Reactions and context
The threats have drawn sharp criticism. Yousef Jabareen, a former lawmaker and chair of the left-wing Hadash party, congratulated the directors, thanking them for exposing "these horrific crimes and the brutal reality in Gaza." The Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote in an editorial that the film "forces 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."
NAZA received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere, surpassing the previous record held by Kaouther Ben Hania's The Voice of Hind Rajab, which premiered last year and was one of our best movies of 2025. The film builds on reporting published between 2023 and 2025 by the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language Local Call, and The Guardian.
Abraham and Szor previously directed No Other Land, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2024 and focused on Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Their new film comes against the backdrop of a conflict that began with Hamas's attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The Gaza health ministry reports more than 73,000 deaths in the last three years of Israeli bombardment. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations have described Israel's actions as "genocide," and a June report by a UN independent commission 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."
The documentary will next screen at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain on 23 September, followed by the New York Film Festival on 26 September. The controversy over NAZA is likely to intensify as it reaches wider audiences, and it comes amid broader European debates about free expression and the Israel-Gaza war. For more on the Venice awards, see our coverage of May el-Toukhy's Golden Lion win.
