Israel Culture Minister Threatens Citizenship of 'NAZA' Directors After Venice Win

Israel's Culture Minister Miki Zohar has condemned the Israeli documentary NAZA and said he would move immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of its directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, after the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

In a post on X, Zohar described the film as "vile" and its victory as shocking. He said the creators' "self-loathing" amounted to a betrayal of the state, and argued that the win was the reason he had pushed a reform of cinema funding so that Israeli citizens would no longer pay for what he called harm to IDF soldiers and the State of Israel. As culture minister, he wrote, he would act at once to revoke the citizenship of the filmmakers.

NAZA was a late addition to the competition lineup in Venice and received a record 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere before taking the Special Jury Prize on Saturday night. It is directed by Abraham and Szor, two of the four directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

According to the film, "NAZA" is a Hebrew acronym used by the Israel Defense Forces to denote collateral damage — civilian deaths considered acceptable in strikes aimed at suspected Hamas militants. In the documentary, Abraham appears on camera interviewing his subjects on a rooftop; they describe the acceptable number of such deaths as elastic, ranging in some cases from under a dozen to 200 or even 500 people, based on interviews with Israeli military personnel featured in the film.

The documentary was shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv and includes interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers.