Latest from No Other Land filmmakers, NAZA, breaks Venice applause meter

NAZA, the new documentary from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, exposes Israel’s targeted missile strikes on civilians. 

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  September 10, 2026 | 4:14pm
Credit: Al Seib / The Academy
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Latest from No Other Land filmmakers, NAZA, breaks Venice applause meter

Half of the filmmakers behind 2024’s No Other Land returned to Venice this year with NAZA, their new documentary about Israel’s attempts to wipe Gaza off the map. The film, which exposes Israel’s targeted missile strikes on civilians through testimony from members of the Israeli intelligence community and military personnel, received a rapturous reception the way only the most revered film festivals can: A lengthy standing ovation. As far as Venice is concerned, NAZA is the festival’s most applauded film ever. The audience was on its feet, clapping for 25 record-breaking minutes, with, per Deadline, filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor standing solemnly throughout. The film’s applause bested last year’s Gaza War breakthrough, The Voice Of Hind Rajab, a tense drama about Palestinian emergency call operators attempting to find a little girl trapped by Israeli bombardment, which received a 24-minute applause. Before that, Pan’s Labyrinth held the title for nearly 20 years with a 22-minute standing ovation. 

During the applause, audience members also unfurled Palestinian and Lebanese flags. As Hollywood runs from political films, it would be impossible to hide politics from NAZA’s content, which was filmed in Tel Aviv amid the ongoing genocide. The film’s title refers to an acronym the IDF uses for the number of civilians killed during its airstrikes. 

Abraham and Szor, both Israeli investigative journalists, won Academy Awards for No Other Land. Their co-directors and fellow Oscar winners, Basel Adra and Hamadan Ballal, were both violently attacked by Israeli forces after the film’s release. In 2025, Israeli forces detained Ballal, prompting a bizarre open letter from 800 Academy members that didn’t name the Oscar-winning filmmaker. A consultant on the film, Awdah Hathaleen, was shot and killed by an Israeli settler last year. 

NAZA is also executive produced by Jonathan Glazer, who became a lightning rod for Zionist rage after he asked Oscar audiences to consider what his film The Zone Of Interest, the 2023 movie about an Auschwitz commandant who lives next door to the concentration camp with his family and tries to ignore the atrocities over the fence, might say about modern times.

 
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