The 2004 documentary Wall by Simone Bitton captured a stark image: a concrete slab sliding into place, shrinking a vibrant Palestinian hillside until it vanished like a stone-throw away world. That visual metaphor of separation has become a daily reality for Palestinians, first through the 448-mile (721-kilometer) barrier that cleaves the West Bank and later through a web of checkpoints, aerial surveillance and settlement expansion.
In the Gaza Strip, the pattern intensified. Israel fenced the enclave in the 1990s and imposed a full blockade after 2007, citing security threats from militant groups. The blockade has choked movement, stifled the economy and made independent reporting nearly impossible. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, a figure that remains difficult to verify because journalists are largely barred from entering Gaza and residents cannot leave.
NAZA: a film without graphic footage
On Sept. 10, 2026 the documentary NAZA premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. Directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the film avoids graphic scenes of bombed-out neighborhoods. Instead, it weaves together anonymous testimonies from 24 members of Israel’s military and intelligence community. These officials describe the use of artificial intelligence to identify Hamas targets, while fully acknowledging that each strike inevitably creates a “collateral damage” count—what the Israeli army calls nezek agavi the eponymous acronym that gives the film its title.
The Israeli military’s “threshold system” determines how many civilian casualties are acceptable in operations launched after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, which killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and resulted in roughly 250 hostages. By presenting the internal logic of target selection, NAZA lays bare a clinical decision-making process that can only function when the population is physically isolated and socially invisible.
Isolation as a precondition for distant killing
Beyond the physical wall, Israel has long regulated Palestinian movement through a complex permit regime, aerial monitoring and the continual expansion of settlements across the West Bank. The result is a landscape where a city like Tel Aviv—only 43 miles (70 kilometers) from Gaza—feels worlds apart from the day-to-day reality of Gaza’s residents. NAZA underscores this gap by pairing soldiers’ audio testimonies with night-time shots of Tel Aviv’s glittering skyline, deliberately keeping the victims out of view.
Filming at night, using disembodied voices and abstract graphics, the documentary mirrors the way Israeli society often perceives the gaza conflict: as a distant, technologically mediated problem rather than a nearby human tragedy. This visual strategy provoked an aggressive response from the Israeli government, which labeled the film as containing “deliberate distortions of reality” and saw Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threaten to strip the directors of citizenship.
Historical context: cinema’s long-standing focus on checkpoints and walls
NAZA joins a lineage of films that have explored Palestinian separation. Elia Suleiman’s dark comedy Divine Intervention (2002) repeatedly places characters at Israeli checkpoints, while Yoav Shamir’s documentary Checkpoint (2003) offers a day-in-the-life view of soldiers and civilians navigating the same barriers. Narrative dramas such as Hany Abu-Assad’s Omar (2013) and Ameen Nayfeh’s 200 Meters (2020) focus on individuals who risk crossing the border, exposing themselves to legal and physical danger.
Documentary work has also highlighted Palestinian resistance to the wall itself. Emad Burnat’s 5 Broken Cameras (2011) chronicles a West Bank farmer’s attempt to record the construction of a massive barrier that chokes his land, despite repeated sabotage of his equipment. More recent works like the Oscar-winning No Other Land (2024) and the protest-focused From Ground Zero keep the conversation alive, though they often receive less international attention than films told from the Israeli perspective.
Backlash, free streaming and the fight for narrative control
Following the Venice debut, the Israeli authorities launched a coordinated campaign to discredit NAZA, accusing it of fabrication. In response, Abraham and Szor announced that the documentary would be free to stream worldwide beginning in November 2026 hoping to bypass official censorship and let global audiences confront the reality of AI-mediated warfare.
The controversy surrounding NAZA illustrates a broader shift: while earlier Israeli films often indulged in the “shooting and crying” trope—exploring soldiers’ guilt without foregrounding Palestinian suffering—today’s political climate seems less tolerant of dissent. The government’s threats against the filmmakers may signal a waning willingness to publicly wrestle with the moral implications of the occupation.
Nevertheless, Palestinians continue to find channels to make their voices heard. Social-media videos, live streams and citizen journalism have become vital tools for documenting life under siege, especially since the latest escalation began. These grassroots efforts cut through physical barriers and challenge the cultural gaps that films like NAZA expose.
