Venice Festival Screens Documentary on Israel’s Systematic Killing of Palestinian Civilians

The Venice Film Festival will officially screen NAZA, a new documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Avraham and Rachel Shor, known for their Oscar-winning film "No Other Land." The film, set to be shown on September 10 at 17:15 in the festival’s main hall, explores what it describes as the systematic mechanisms behind Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The documentary is produced by The Guardian and JW Films, with British-Jewish director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer serving as executive producer. Glazer previously sparked controversy during his 2024 Oscar acceptance speech by criticizing the use of Jewish identity and the Holocaust to justify the Israeli occupation.

"No Other Land," which Avraham and Shor co-directed with Basel Adra and Hamdan Bilal, focused on Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta in southern Mount Hebron resisting home demolitions and forced displacement. It won multiple awards including the Berlin Film Festival prize, Gotham Award, New York Critics Award, European Oscar, and the 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary. During their Oscar speech, the filmmakers called for global action to stop what they termed the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and advocated for a political solution based on equality and national rights for both peoples.

In addition to NAZA, the festival will screen outside the competition Amos Gitai’s new film "The Journey to Jericho," which follows the Bedouin tribe of Arab al-Jahalin and includes archival interviews with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin discussing Gaza and Jericho. The Venice Film Festival’s inclusion of these films highlights ongoing international attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through cinema.