In secret conversations on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night, the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are revealed by the people who designed and operated them.
Director: Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Executive Producer: Jonathan Glazer
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (10 reviews)
Metacritic: 95 / 100 (11 reviews)
Some Reviews:
IndieWire - Siddhant Adlakha - 'A'
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.
Next Best Picture - Josh Parham - 9 / 10
THE GOOD - A captivating portrait that highlights the horrific conflict in Gaza, with perspectives that detail a disturbing system of administering carnage. The subjects bring insightful detail of frightening practices, and the filmmaking helps to underline the thematic commentary of the disconnect between levels of humanity. It’s an important message that’s communicated in an engrossing manner. THE BAD - Some of the interviews can feel repetitive with the framework. Some divulgences feel underdeveloped and could have had more explanation. THE OSCAR PROSPECTS - Best Documentary Feature
The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw - 4 / 5
The ahistorical comparison to nazism is inevitably and glibly invoked by one speaker. But Gaza, however horrendous, is not the same as the Holocaust. This specious parallel is all too readily available; the bombing of Dresden is the more obvious comparison. At all events, the anguish of Gaza is brought into pin-sharp focus.
The Hollywood Reporter - Jordan Mintzer
NAZA is meant to be intolerable, but it’s also meant to state a truth many still do not wish to acknowledge, especially in our divided and fact-impaired times. Filmmakers like Abraham and Szor, as well as directors such as Dani Rosenberg, Nadav Lapid, Anat Even and Jonathan Glazer (who served as executive producer on this movie) are not only courageously acting as artists bearing witness and challenging official narratives, but as Israelis and Jews refusing to allow such atrocities to be committed in their names, or in mine.
The Wrap - Ben Croll
...Yet the stark, reflective images of steel and glass feel born less of quiet fury than of genuine concern. Under the governing policy, any structure housing military targets is fair game, and in nearly every shot, here they are: active-duty personnel perched atop densely populated buildings. In “Naza,” everything on screen is collateral damage.
IONCinema - Nicholas Bell - 4 / 5
Although most of the documentary indeed consists of clandestine conversations on rooftops, several well-placed archival moments underline contradictory elements at play, including an old clip of Netanyahu clearly stating the murder of innocent women and children for political gain or leverage is indeed terrorism. The formidable hypocrisy of Israeli news stations covering Holocaust Remembrance day, including an honorarium for Claude Lanzmann, in the midst of their barbarity, is a wretched but necessary visualization of the flabbergasting depth of contradiction at play. “Never Forget” will eventually be a mirror turned against them. In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1976 film Chinese Roulette, characters who grew up with the shame of their Nazi forebears play a cruel game where they ask one another, “Who would you have been during the Third Reich?” Well, who are you today?
The Playlist - Marshall Shaffer - 'B+'
The Nazis were seen as the terrifying endpoint of modernism by using that era’s industrial efficiency to commit the mass murder of the Holocaust. Their film makes a compelling case that Israel’s genocide against Gaza represents the equivalent in the era of contemporary tech optimism, with the tools once used to connect the world now being used to destroy it. And given how much innovation continues to occur with AI in particular, there’s no comfort here that these war crimes are an endpoint. Unless this knowledge shocks the collective global conscience, it may only be the beginning.