Israeli-made film about use of AI for mass killing in Gaza gets record ovation at Venice premiere

A film documenting Israel's use of artificial intelligence to facilitate the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip received a record 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

"NAZA" details the brutal Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territory through anonymous interviews with two dozen whistleblowers from the Israeli military or intelligence services.

A chilling new documentary about Israel's AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza from two Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers received a 25-minute ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

The audience clapped continuously for Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after the screening, an AFP reporter witnessed, setting what is thought to be a new record in Venice after a 23-minute ovation for another film about Gaza last year.

"We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did," Abraham told AFP. "The goal was very simple: we wanted to hear in as much detail as possible, how the systems of killing in Gaza looked like, how they operated."

The 80-minute film left many audience members stunned, with interviewees describing how they felt like they worked in a killing "factory" or a lethal video game.

"NAZA" draws its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that are expected to be killed in an air strike.

It was described as an "urgent gut-punch" by film magazine Screen, while The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired "outrage ...indignity as well. Most certainly disgust, on a profound level, for the current Israeli regime".

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has left around 73,500 Palestinians dead and 174,500 wounded since October 2023, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the United Nations deems reliable.

The pounding of the territory followed an attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, that resulted in the death of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

First-person testimony

The men and women featured in "NAZA", with their voices and faces digitally altered, detail an AI-powered system known as "Lavender" that was used to identify people for assassination.

"It was done on a mass scale, like a factory," one says, filmed like all of them at night on a roof terrace with an eerily quiet Tel Aviv as the background.

"Lavender" uses data from the mass surveillance of Gaza, where the entire telecommunications network is monitored by Israel, to identify targets based on their phone calls, movements and interactions.

"The system's parameters are so complex, it's hard to understand," one interviewee, who said he worked on the system, told the filmmakers.

Others describe the systematic destruction of civilian homes, the disregard for war and humanitarian laws, and a "general atmosphere" of "hatred" towards Palestinians.

"We show in our film a targeting system that is, by design, targeting people in civilian spaces, in their ​family homes," Abraham told Reuters. "Sometimes it can be 500 NAZA ... destroying entire villages or entire neighbourhoods."

Intelligence officers described an AI-assisted ‌system that identified targets using data gathered from thousands of hacked mobile phones. They said the phrase "daddy's home" picked up on a child's phone would be enough to trigger an air strike.

"It's like a video game because everything is done remotely," one interviewee involved in identifying targets says at one point.

Another describes it as "insanely fun".

The officers also described the killing of civilians in Israeli-designated no-go zones, including near aid distribution centres. The location of the zones was not disclosed to residents, one officer said: "They ‌have to learn with blood."

The United Nations said last year that more than 400 Palestinians were killed while seeking aid. Israel acknowledged civilians had been harmed at distribution centres and said it had amended its rules of ​engagement.

Abraham and Szor also sat down for an exclusive interview with Variety where they detailed the passion behind the project.

"Rachel and I, we’ve always felt a responsibility to document what our country is doing to Palestinians. And our focus, in “No Other Land” as well, has been on crimes that we view as systemic crimes," said Abraham adding, "So, not some soldier making a mistake or some sporadic incident. But things that are really fundamental parts of the way the Israeli government, and the army, operate."

He continued, "Because Palestinians were documenting their own destruction. As Israelis, we found ourselves wanting to use the kind of position that we have, the access that we have to our own society, to people that went into the military, to look at that system as it carried out what all human rights organizations are saying is a genocide. To look at it from the inside."

They also detailed the extensive research that went into the project: "It was a challenge. It took time. I work as an investigative journalist, so for many years I’ve been searching for people from within the Israeli system," said Abraham.

Szor further added, "Well, the film touches on the use of AI just to choose who will be a target. It touches on massacres that happen at humanitarian food distribution sites. It touches on the shootings of people who are just going back to their neighborhood, who have been displaced. For me, also as an Israeli, something that was important to hear is this choice of targeting the Palestinians in their homes."

Gaza films

The result of a nearly three-year investigation, "NAZA" is the only documentary in competition at this year's Venice Film Festival, which wraps up on Saturday.

Ovations can be easily manipulated and are seen as an imperfect measure of a film, but they do give an indication of the impact on festival-goers and critics.

Along with Palestinian peers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, Abraham and Szor won an Oscar in 2025 for their film "No Other Land" about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Their latest movie has been produced by Britain's Jim Wilson with help from Jonathan Glazer – the team behind Auschwitz-set Oscar winner "The Zone of Interest" – as well as Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The war in Gaza retains broad Israeli public support, but Abraham and Szor said they hoped it would encourage Western nations to drop their backing for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions.

"Those of us inside Israel and Palestine trying to fight for change, need it," Abraham told AFP. "You are weakening the people inside who are supporting human rights and a political solution by refusing to act."

Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza, accusing Hamas of hiding among the population of the densely packed and besieged enclave where around two million people lived before the war.

Last year, "The Voice of Hind Rajab", a docu-drama about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces, picked up second prize at the festival after receiving a 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere.

Foreign journalists have been prevented from reporting from Gaza since the start of the conflict, except under tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military.

With additional input from Reuters and AFP.