NAZA needs little introduction. The film by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, arrived at the Venice Film Festival as one of the most anticipated and debated titles, winning the Special Jury Prize. From there it continued its international journey, also taking the audience award for Best European Film at San Sebastián and finding distribution in dozens of territories.
In Italy, what was initially planned as a limited event release on September 28, 29 and 30 became, driven by audience response, an extended run with distribution by I Wonder Pictures.
After immediately taking the top spot during the three days of the event release, NAZA held the lead in the following weekend, finishing ahead of high-profile titles such as Heart of the Beast — Into the Savage Deep, Verity and Digger. In its first seven days of Italian programming the documentary surpassed three million euros, drawing close to 400,000 spectators. A particularly significant result for an 80-minute documentary built entirely from testimonies and conversations.
Shot mainly at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, NAZA collects the testimonies of some current and former members of the Israeli intelligence and military apparatus involved in surveillance and operations carried out in Gaza. Faces and voices were digitally altered to protect their identities and ensure the anonymity of sources who would otherwise not expose themselves. The film indeed arises from the meeting of cinema and investigative journalism, being produced by The Guardian and JW Films, and also based on investigative work carried out in recent years together with journalist and activist collectives +972 Magazine and Local Call.
The approach chosen by Abraham and Szor is deliberately controlled. There are no shouted confrontations, and the film avoids turning interviews into spectacular interrogations. Abraham’s questions mainly seek to reconstruct how the system works, while silences, hesitations, and the coldness of the responses are the confirmation of what we already knew. NAZA proceeds as a checklist from which voices emerge, one after another: algorithms, surveillance systems, target identification, calculation of possible civilian casualties, and the bombardment of homes.
Why The Right to Kill Is Cited in NAZA
Among the documentary’s most unexpected moments is the reference to a film co-produced by the UK and the USA. It is Eye in the Sky (2015), released in Italy under the title The Right to Kill, directed by Gavin Hood. The film, starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul and Alan Rickman, is a thriller built around the decision of whether to authorize or not a drone strike against terrorists in Kenya when a girl enters the area slated to be hit.
The film’s presence in NAZA is not, however, merely a cinephile reference. One of the interviewed soldiers recalls that this film was shown as part of their training, in relation to the ethical implications of their work. It is here that NAZA reveals one of the most disturbing contradictions. The Right to Kill is almost entirely founded on the existence of a moral boundary. The military apparatus possesses the technology to eliminate its targets, but the presence of a single girl forces soldiers, officers and political authorities to pause, discuss, recalculate the risk, and question the legitimacy of the action. The civilian remains a human being, visible and recognizable, and the possibility of their death becomes the very center of the moral conflict narrated by the film.
The testimonies gathered by Abraham and Szor in NAZA describe instead a process that has moved in the opposite direction. Technological distance does not necessarily produce greater prudence, but contributes to transforming victims into categories, percentages, and numbers that are acceptable or even not considered. In the habituation of carrying out orders without being able to challenge them, performing a job described as ‘a video game’, the moral dilemma no longer arises and vanishes beneath a blanket of death and destruction.
Below is the trailer for The Right to Kill, available for on-demand rental on various platforms and streaming on Prime Video.
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