Film world rallies behind NAZA directors after Israel threat — SkimNews
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- Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor won the special jury prize at Venice for NAZA on Saturday after a record 25-minute standing ovation, prompting culture minister Miki Zohar to threaten immediate citizenship revocation, accusing them of 'treason against the state'.
- NAZA, produced by the Guardian and built on investigations by +972 Magazine and Local Call, features 24 Israeli military and intelligence sources describing AI-powered targeting systems used in Gaza strikes; its title uses Israel's intelligence acronym for expected civilian deaths per strike.
- Telluride, Locarno, San Sebastián, and Berlin film festival directors publicly condemned the threats, with Berlin's Tricia Tuttle saying 'the response to art must be dialogue and scrutiny, not intimidation or punishment by the state.'
- Over 1,500 Israeli film-makers, including Nadav Lapid and Liran Atzmor, signed a petition defending the directors and warning that rhetoric against them was approaching 'effectively sanctioning violence'.
- Laura Poitras, consultant on the film, defended its factual credentials and noted 'Israel has killed over 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza and has normalised the murder of journalists.'
- The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, which awarded Abraham and Szor a documentary Oscar in 2025 for No Other Land, has not commented on the citizenship threats against its recent winners.
Why it matters: The response reveals a split between festival leadership and institutional gatekeepers: directors of Telluride, Locarno, San Sebastián, and Berlin publicly rallied behind the filmmakers within days, while the Academy that honored them for No Other Land and the Venice jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal remained silent — exposing how state retaliation against documentary journalism is being normalized as a free-speech test for the entire awards ecosystem.
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