Gaza Doc ‘NAZA,’ From ‘No Other Land’ Directors, Earns Record-Breaking 24.5-Minute Venice Ovation as Producer Jonathan Glazer Leads Applause

“NAZA,” the new documentary from “No Other Land” directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, earned a massive 24.5-minute ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere on Thursday.

This marks the longest-ever standing ovation in Venice, besting the 22 minutes for “The Voice of Hind Rajab” last year, and apparently the longest at any film festival period.

Oscar-winning “Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, who is an executive producer on the film, embraced Abraham and Szor and cheered them on throughout the astounding applause. The directing duo both got teary-eyed at points, wiping their eyes while audience members held up Palestinian flags.

The film shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis. The hot-button doc, which was shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, features revelatory interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers.
“NAZA,” a term that appears throughout the documentary, is an acronym for collateral damage used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike.

Abraham and Szor were two of the four directors of “No Other Land,” which won the 2025 best documentary Oscar and depicts the Israeli government’s efforts to force Palestinians from their homes in the southern West Bank.

In an interview with Variety ahead of the doc’s premiere, Abraham said: “As Israelis, we found ourselves wanting to use the kind of position that we have — the access that we have to people in our own society who went into the military — to look at that system as it carried out what all human rights organizations are saying is a genocide.”

The film, which is the only documentary feature in this year’s Venice’s competition lineup, is produced by British newspaper The Guardian and James Wilson (JW Films) and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer. Wilson and Glazer are the Oscar-winning team behind the film “The Zone of Interest.”

Last year, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza-set “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about the death of a 6-year-old girl killed by Israeli military fire while attempting to flee Gaza City with her family, elicited a 22-minute standing ovation, which stands as the fest’s longest. Ben Hania is part of Venice’s Maggie Gyllenhaal-led jury that will be selecting the award winners on Saturday.