Fifteen NAZA: A Documentary Puts a Number on the Civilians an Airstrike Is Expected to Kill
The Venice prize-winning film on Israeli targeting systems reached Indonesian cinemas on 16 October. Its subject is a single field in a targeting workflow: the number of civilians an attack is expected to kill.
Tel Aviv at night. The interviews in NAZA were recorded on rooftops in the city over three years. Photo: Gilad Avidan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
NAZA, a British documentary directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, opened in Indonesian cinemas on 16 October 2026, brought in by the streaming platform KlikFilm. It arrived after winning the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered in competition on 10 September 2026. The Guardian, which produced the film with JW Films, announced the award in its press office, and the Venice Biennale lists NAZA in its 2026 competition programme.
The title is not a name. According to the film, NAZA is the Israeli military acronym for nezek agavi, Hebrew for collateral damage, and it works as a number attached to a potential target: the expected count of civilians killed if the target is struck. An interviewee quoted in the film states the grammar of it plainly: “We say 15 NAZA. We don’t say 15 people killed and certainly not that 15 children and women will be killed.” According to testimony presented in the film, targets with values below 20 required no special authorisation, while higher values could be approved, up to 500 in one case.
The film is built from 24 interviews with Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, recorded at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv across three years, with faces shown as silhouettes and voices altered. Interviewees describe a targeting pipeline fed by surveillance of Gaza’s phone network, in which buildings and their storeys are catalogued, and an artificial intelligence system called Lavender is described as generating candidate targets. One interviewee calls it “a factory of targets”. Another describes using a child’s phone to establish when the father is at home; the phrase used inside the system, according to the film, is “Where’s Daddy?”
Israel rejects the account. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said the film relies on anonymous testimonies “from individuals whose identities cannot be verified, including whether they served in the IDF, in what capacity, or whether they were involved in the matters about which the allegations are being made”. The military said claims about national and military strategy were “clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers”, and that decisions on the selection and approval of strikes “are made by human personnel only, in accordance with IDF guidelines, and not by artificial intelligence”.
At the award ceremony, Abraham said the intelligence officers interviewed for the film described the killing of Palestinians as “systemic. Not by accident. But by design”, and said Israeli politicians and journalists were attacking the film “without even seeing it”. Applause at the premiere was reported to have lasted 24 and a half minutes, longer than the 22 minutes recorded for The Voice of Hind Rajab in 2025. The film has since been sold into more than 50 territories, and Dogwoof released it in British cinemas on 16 October, with a streaming release on the Guardian’s website expected in late November.
Indonesian Summary
NAZA, dokumenter Inggris karya Yuval Abraham dan Rachel Szor, tayang di bioskop Indonesia mulai 16 Oktober 2026 melalui KlikFilm, setelah memenangi Special Jury Prize di Festival Film Venesia ke-83. Judulnya berasal dari akronim militer Israel, nezek agavi, istilah untuk kerusakan sampingan, dan dipakai sebagai angka perkiraan warga sipil yang akan tewas bila satu sasaran dibom. Film disusun dari 24 wawancara dengan tentara dan perwira intelijen Israel, direkam malam hari di atap gedung Tel Aviv selama tiga tahun, dengan wajah disamarkan. Menurut kesaksian dalam film, sasaran dengan nilai di bawah 20 tidak memerlukan otorisasi khusus, sedangkan nilai lebih tinggi dapat disetujui, hingga 500 pada satu kasus. Juru bicara IDF menolak isi film karena mengandalkan kesaksian anonim yang identitas dan perannya tidak dapat diverifikasi, dan menegaskan keputusan pengeboman hanya diambil personel manusia, bukan kecerdasan artifisial.
The Guardian press office, NAZA awarded the Special Jury Prize at Venice International Film Festival, 12 September 2026: theguardian.com
La Biennale di Venezia, NAZA, Venezia 83 competition programme: labiennale.org
The Jerusalem Post, NAZA wins Venice Jury Prize as IDF rejects film’s claims, September 2026: jpost.com
CNN Indonesia, Film NAZA tayang 16 Oktober di bioskop Indonesia, 10 October 2026: cnnindonesia.com
ANTARA News, Film dokumenter NAZA tayang di bioskop Indonesia pada Oktober, 9 October 2026: antaranews.com
ICRC, Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions (1977), Article 51, protection of the civilian population: ihl-databases.icrc.org
If the account in the film is accurate, the significant object is not the number but its location. International humanitarian law asks whether an attack is expected to cause incidental civilian harm excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, a judgement to be made for each attack, by the commander who orders it, on the information available at the time. A pre-assigned value relocates that judgement earlier in the chain, into an authorisation threshold: below 20, no sign-off; above it, a signature. Once the expected deaths are a field to be filled, the question stops being whether this attack is lawful and becomes whether this attack is within the approved range. The civilians are then counted before they are killed, which is precisely why the dispute about the film turns on the verification of testimony rather than on the existence of the field.
That is also where a documentary can do something a casualty figure cannot. A death toll is contested as a number, and disputed numbers can be argued down. A described procedure is contested as a procedure, and procedures leave traces: logs, approvals, message traffic, the ordinary sediment of an office. The IDF statement that strike decisions are made by human personnel and not by artificial intelligence is, in that sense, a claim about the location of judgement, and it is a claim that can in principle be tested. Until it is, the arithmetic in the film stands as an allegation with a source, and the film’s own remedy is the plainest one available: that more people look at it, including in Indonesia, where it has been showing since 16 October.