The documentary NAZA will shake you to your core

Directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor capture everything in NAZA at night. This doesn’t just pertain to this documentary’s interviews with assorted Israeli citizens (working in jobs like drone strike operator, intelligence officer, or coding, among others) who’ve carried out the Palestinian genocide. It also extends to footage captured of various Tel Aviv citizens nonchalantly existing in apartments.

The faces of these inhabitants are often obscured, much like the interview subjects have their visages covered. However, viewers clearly witness these individuals doing yoga, folding laundry, cleaning tables. So many mundane tasks. Often their televisions blare propaganda justifying and normalizing the slaughter of Palestinians.

These cutaways from the assorted interviews depict a level of comfort Palestinian civilians can’t obtain. Sure, rockets can race overhead in Tel Aviv. Generally, though, this population goes about its business like any other major city. NAZA features wide shots of people eating and laughing at nice restaurants. Folks dance to trap music. People are catching a jog before dawn breaks. The dissonance between these banal images of normalcy and a genocide happening in Gaza just under 70 kilometers away is chilling.

Abraham and Szor don’t need intrusive music or narration to hammer home this eerie reality. Juxtaposing unspeakably horrifying anecdotes with these subdued images is enough. This is what normalized colonization looks like.

Those anecdotes, though, are NAZA’s primary focus. These accounts come from various Israeli’s recounting their work in killing Palestinians. The country’s government further ramped up this task after October 7, 2023. In matter-of-fact tones, they recall matters like using phones to track down the location of Palestinian citizens and nonchalant attitudes towards the death of children. These are the architects of mass slaughter. These are their stories. NAZA bears witness to how unthinkable war crimes become another nine-to-five job.

Or, as one interview subject puts it, "I know now how people can bomb a house and then return home to their clinical engineering degrees."

Abraham and Szor’s cameras and interviews reveal wildly varying forms of wiping out Palestinians. One person recalls various techniques used to set fire to homes. Another elaborates on how snipers were told to promptly kill starving Palestinians who scrambled towards aid. Then there’s the folks NAZA focuses on towards the end of its runtime. These were the souls responsible for curbing Palestinians from going to the International Criminal Court or other bodies that could hold Israeli forces accountable for their crimes.

One individual that they’d dig up dirt on whoever was planning to speak up (an extramarital affair, perhaps, or concealed homosexuality) and use that to ensure they’d never come forward. These particular people aren’t using drones or guns per se, but they’re still robbing Palestinians of their humanity and autonomy. That’s the binding force behind NAZA’s interview subjects. Dehumanizing the “other” and justifying unthinkable atrocities. Even when children are murdered, there’s always a rationale.

To say NAZA is a harrowing watch is an understatement. Abraham and Szor’s intentionally subdued visual aesthetic proves crucial in this regard. This includes the soundtrack, which largely consists of genocide-enabler testimonies accompanied by distant sounds of airplanes landing, car horns, or faint conversations. This auditory landscape keeps the focus squarely on horrific anecdotes often erased and suppressed (anti-Israel graffiti is a “hate crime” in certain parts of Texas). However, like those shots of apartment-dwelling Tel Aviv denizens, those faraway noises make it clear these interview subjects aren’t anomalous individuals or “a few bad apples.”

They inhabit a larger world, one in which the normalization of colonialism and genocide of Indigenous souls goes far beyond Israel’s borders. I’m typing this on unceded land from tribes like the Caddo, Wichita, Tawakoni, and Kiikaapoi people. Indigenous peoples in Brazil are constantly under threat from violence and exploitation. Justifying crimes against humanity and the elimination of Indigenous lives is everywhere. Abraham and Szor’s auditory and visual NAZA impulses reinforce this grander scope without distracting from the gut-wrenching testimonies at hand.

Such statements include stories about how drone strike operators took to processing these missions “like a video game.” Others recall how their co-workers cheered on these slayings. One interview subject, while expressing remorse for the past, openly admits feeling a unique and thrilling adrenaline surge carrying out killings. It’s staggering that the NAZA crew got these words on camera (even with the appearances and voices of the various military personnel changed). Then again, briefly seen news footage shows various Israeli politicians boasting about eliminating Palestinians from the face of the Earth. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising what genocide architects and enablers say once they’re shrouded in shadows.

NAZA only shifts away from its default visual scheme once for its final scene. This segment consists of footage captured on a phone by a Palestinian citizen. An IDF airstrike has just decimated civilian Gaza territory. Thus, this phone chronicles neighbors navigating the wreckage of their homes for their loved ones. One father calls to his children, now buried underneath rubble. As the realization of what’s happened to them sets in, the man moans, sobs, and recalls how he told his son to watch out for his sister. His agonizing cries are one of many wails and heart-shattering noises filling the screen.

Up to this point, NAZA has emphasized stories of people who make war crimes possible. Now audiences see the human cost of treating people “like a video game” from the point-of-view of a Palestinian citizen living through this genocide.

Once the lights went up at my NAZA screening, as the credits silently rolled on, an unusual thing happened. Nobody got up. We all sat silently, processing everything we’d just witnessed. So impactful was this filmmaking and overall movie that suddenly bolting from the premises felt insulting. Gradually, we all stood up and slowly ventured towards the exits. Outside the theater, it was only 12:30 PM. The sun was shining down. Yet NAZA’s harrowing nighttime interviews consumed my mind and, undoubtedly, everyone else in that auditorium that day.