Gaza Documentary ‘NAZA’ Sparks IDF Counter Film to Rebut Venice Winner

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s Israeli documentary NAZA, which earned both a Special Jury prize and blowback from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after a Venice premiere, has now sparked a counter-documentary.

NAZA: The Real Story, from Israeli director and IDF reserve officer Roi Danino, has first-hand testimony from IDF soldiers about how they fought the Gaza war against Hamas and aims to take down the bombshell NAZA whistleblower film. “It is their account, in their own words. Watch it, then decide what you think,” the producers of the rebuttal documentary say on the NAZA: The Real Story website, where the counter film can be viewed.

Abraham and Szor in their The Guardian-produced doc talk to anonymous IDF officers and soldiers who reveal how deliberate and systematic they’ve been in targeting civilians during the Gaza war, (the NAZA of the title is an acronym of a Hebrew expression meaning “collateral damage”).

The IDF on Oct. 1 came out with an official, and lengthy, response to NAZA. The creators of the 49-minute rebuttal film, including fellow IDF reserve officer Ariel Averbuch and Israeli content creator Hagay Gutman, contrast the on-the-record accounts of Israel’s Gaza war they offer with the anonymized Hebrew-language interviews with two dozen IDF veterans that claimed in the original NAZA documentary widespread and systemic misconduct in how Israel operated in Gaza after Oct. 2023.

NAZA: The Real Story, filmed at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv (just like Abraham and Szor’s NAZA), looks to seize the media narrative back from the filmmakers. “[The soldiers] testimonies offer a closer look at the conditions they faced, the dilemmas they encountered and how they describe the conduct of the war,” the producers of NAZA: The Real Story, added on the website.

Abraham and Szor’s NAZA is currently in theaters in Europe and the U.S. The Guardian intends to stream the documentary for free on its website in late November.

NAZA had its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival, where it played to an enthusiastic crowd inside Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, while drawing a small but intense pro-Israel protest outside the theater.