‘NAZA’ Review: The Israeli Directors of ‘No Other Land’ Illuminate the Mechanics of Genocide in Another Essential Documentary

Rooftop interviews in Tel Aviv play host to monstrous revelations about AI-assisted massacres.

A documentary exposing the brutal machinery of modern genocide, “NAZA” gets its name from a euphemistic acronym casually employed by Israeli intelligence. It refers to the number of civilians designated “Nezek Agavi” or collateral damage in an air strike — which is to say, before an air strike. The title is also an onomatopoeia: the film may be journalistic in origin, but its cinematic effects are downright nauseating. Over a mere 80 minutes filmed on rooftops in Tel Aviv, the Israeli half of the collective behind West Bank land-grab doc “No Other Land” — directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham — interview anonymous IDF sources who detail their methodology in drawings and words. Their silences, however, are just as revealing.

Jumping between archival clips, shots of modern infrastructure, and sit-downs with a mammoth 24 different whistleblowers, “NAZA” builds on existing reporting by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call. Some of this was carried out by Abraham himself, who plays the role of chief interrogator here, sitting opposite each source in profile in the dead of night. His face (and his furor at what he’s told) are dimly lit, while his sources are in complete shadow to protect their identities. The camera, however, seldom strays from their outlines, practically turning these people into human-shaped voids — a murkiness matched by eerie mechanical rumblings all around.

“You can see the city, but the city can’t see you,” one subject observes about their makeshift, open air studio. This subterfuge makes sense, since what these people reveal implicates their superiors. However, it also equals tacit admission of their own hand in mass murder. And yet, their reasons for speaking out aren’t as straightforward as a heavy conscience. Untangling their motives might just be the most harrowing thing about the movie — second, of course, to the killings they describe.

The interviews in “NAZA” bear a striking resemblance to those in Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Look of Silence,” about the perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1960s politicide, when millions sympathetic to communism were put to death. Much like in that documentary — with its jaw-dropping footage you can’t quite believe was captured — the military cogs Abraham interviews acknowledge their calculated barbarism, but don’t immediately understand or accept the nature of their actions. One of them almost does, reflecting on tales of the Holocaust as a Claude Lanzmann retrospective is advertised on a billboard nearby. “I still see those Nazis as evil,” he mutters. “But what does that mean I am?”

Other subjects, however, aren’t so self-aware. They aren’t ready to admit their culpability in designing programs like Lavender — the AI that labels “likely” Hamas targets, with a huge margin of error — or enacting strategies like “Where’s Daddy?,” which they describe as the intentional targeting of suspected operatives at home with their families. The technology, in this case, searches through key words, often spoken by children, from tapped phone calls in real time, before a fatal strike is deployed by human hands. It’s the umpteenth and perhaps ultimate recent example of AI sapping us of our humanity. 

Each new revelation is also accompanied by a willing disclosure that civilian targets were not just an expendable fixture of Israel’s post-October 7^th campaign, but the mission at large. Some of the people Abraham talks to even have a boastful tone, making you wonder why they agreed to blow the whistle at all. Does something deep down, some latent remorse, urge them to speak out? Or do they simply need an outlet to show off — or just to chat? Where one subject pauses to consider if he’s partaken in ethnic cleansing, another simply rattles through his achievements, as though listing accomplishments in a video game.

The details of the IDF’s gamification of murder are especially gut-wrenching, and while Abraham doesn’t verbally dispute how his subjects frame October 7^th (in a wider historical context), the movie’s sense of historicity is a challenge all on its own. Through black and white archival footage dating back over a century, “NAZA” gestures towards not only the origins of Tel Aviv and the displacement of Palestinian villages, but also, towards how these systems of surveillance were first established, by means of Israel controlling who could actually build internet and telecommunications infrastructure in Gaza.

Although Tel Aviv is the movie’s backdrop, Szor, Abraham and their various cinematographers (one of whom is credited anonymously) also frame the city’s fabric in intriguing ways. Using long lenses, they peer through civilian windows at night, inducing a sense of unease as ordinary people unwind, re-creating the very same voyeurism inherent to the IDF’s Big Brother protocols. This reversal of surveillance serves a secondary purpose too: the civilians they watch are, more often than not, tuned in to news channels, where politicians and talking heads make moralistic proclamations, which are directly contradicted by the movie’s exposés. It paints a clear political portrait of the kind of media environment that breeds hatred in the first place, and allows mass killings to be carried out.

As interviewees list justifications for murdering civilians, including children, the camera’s gaze eventually falls on the IDF’s own military headquarters. It’s located in the heart of Tel Aviv, as part of the city’s skyline, as though the film were highlighting the hypocrisy of repeated refrains about “human shields.” No Israeli film is likely to feature full-throated calls for decolonization, but “NAZA” is no less provocative a subversion of the dominant narratives and ideologies re-enforcing the country’s cruelty for that. It’s likely to shake you to your core — not because of what facts might be revealed (much of this information is already out there), but rather because of the stirring form in which they come to light. 

The question of how a society clinging to its victimhood during World War II can so eagerly re-create those same conditions is answered in “NAZA,” with stark nonchalance, via the revolting contradictions of its many subjects, whose orbits you’re never allowed to escape. The way they compartmentalize their own actions and ethos is, for better or worse, a key facet of the human story. Despite so much of the image being awash in silhouette, Szor and Abraham illuminate banal evils from within the darkness where they reside.

Grade: A

“NAZA” premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.