‘NAZA’ Producer James Wilson Addresses “Hysterical, Vituperative” Israeli Government Backlash Against Directors

NAZA producer James Wilson has addressed the Israeli government and military backlash against co-directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham over their bombshell documentary exposing Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian targets in Gaza.

Wilson told an onstage conversation at the BFI London Film Festival that criticism of the film and threats against the directors were largely from people who had not seen the work.

He said the “hysterical, vituperative, aggressive backlash” from members of the Israeli government and threats to revoke the directors’ citizenship had been been “very difficult, stressful, horrible and scary”.

“They are safe, and they are okay,” he added, suggesting that the reaction from the Israeli government also came with the territory.

“I think it’s part of the film,” he said citing a piece by an Israeli journalist in the Jewish American newspaper Forward.

“She wrote about the reaction to the film being part of the film, and how the sort of cognitive dissonance, around that reaction of people who haven’t seen the film talking about the film, was sort of what the film was also about,” he said. “There’s a sort of meta aspect to that reaction to the film that the film embodies.”

Wilson emphasized, however, that the overwhelming response to the documentary had been positive, even if the subject-matter is difficult.

“The majority reaction to the film has been, from my point of view, extremely positive, and I’m personally very pleased at that. The critical reaction to the film has been extraordinarily positive,” he said.

“One thing that’s been particularly pleasing to me is how many serious film critics have discussed and thought into the cinematic formal ideas in the film… it’s a really important piece of cinema in terms of its content, but also its form.”

Framed around nighttime rooftop interviews against the backdrop of the Tel Aviv skyline with 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, the documentary exposes the AI, phone surveillance and crude points-based systems deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza to decide targets, Hamas-related or otherwise.

It probes the Israeli military’s strategy of taking out targets in their homes regardless of whether children and other family members are likely to be killed in the strike as well.

The title NAZA is taken from the Israeli military’s Hebrew acronym to describe the number of civilians that could die when tallying up an estimated death-toll ahead of a strike.