Jonathan Glazer calls Israel’s NAZA backlash ‘venal’

Director Jonathan Glazer said Israel’s reaction to the Gaza documentary NAZA was “much more venal” than he expected, at the film’s UK premiere in London.

As an executive producer of the documentary, Glazer joined a stage conversation. He spoke on Thursday night with the editor-in-chief of the newspaper that produced it, Katharine Viner.

He expected part of the backlash, he said. “In my point of view,” though, it was far worse than he thought.

Jonathan Glazer on dehumanisation

Jonathan Glazer said he felt “shocked into silence” when he first watched NAZA. He sees it as “clearly in dialogue” with his own film, The Zone of Interest.

That 2023 drama showed the daily routines of Nazi officers at Auschwitz. Both works tackle “very similar themes,” Glazer said.

“Both films deal with dehumanisation,” he told the audience. In his view, trouble starts when people treat others as lesser beings.

Notably, NAZA includes 24 interviews with Israeli military insiders. They describe how an AI-assisted surveillance system worked during the war in Gaza.

How Israel hit back at the filmmakers

Israel’s government has denounced the documentary and gone after those behind it. It plans to revoke the citizenship of people who “smear” Israeli soldiers.

In addition, officials accused the co-directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, of treason. They also told legal and security chiefs to find and prosecute the soldiers who appeared.

Eyal Zamir, the army’s chief of staff, vowed to deploy “every tool at our disposal” in answering the film. The army also released a ten-page reply drawn from talks with more than 100 sources.

In addition, the government promoted an online film project that copies the style of NAZA, in an effort to counter its findings.

Demonstrators stood outside the home of Szor’s parents and called for her execution. A mural in Ashdod even showed the filmmakers through the sights of a gun.

Abraham said the film lets viewers examine the “mechanisms that allow human beings to do this to other human beings.” To show that, the pair shot footage inside Tel Aviv apartments, where families gather to watch the war on television.

Also, Szor told an audience in New York: “Our country is doing so much to hide these systems.” She said the world they reveal stays closed even to the Israeli public.

Success for Jonathan Glazer’s team

However, Jonathan Glazer and his colleagues have refused to back down, and NAZA has done well despite the pressure. It won a record 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice festival, along with a special jury prize.

Also, it opened at number one in Italy, ahead of a Marvel film. Cinemas in more than 50 countries will show it, and viewers can stream it free online from late November.

Glazer won an Academy Award in 2024 for The Zone of Interest. In his speech, he said all the film’s choices aimed to make audiences ask “look what we do now.”

Meanwhile, the debate shows no sign of fading, as the film keeps reaching new audiences and the row with the government deepens.