Zohar Threatens to Strip NAZA Filmmakers' Citizenship — SkimNews
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- Miki Zohar, Israel's Minister of Culture, threatened to revoke the citizenships of 'NAZA' co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, calling the film 'shocking' and accusing them of 'betraying the state' over 'self-loathing' aimed at winning 'applause from antisemites.'
- 'NAZA' documents 'in detail the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,' according to its official logline.
- The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a 24.5-minute standing ovation — the longest in festival history — and won the special jury prize for Abraham and Szor.
- In his acceptance speech, Abraham said Israeli politicians and journalists are 'attacking this film and denying it without even seeing it,' arguing that 'the denial of a crime is what helps it persist.'
- Abraham also urged Italians and Germans to watch the film because their governments are 'blocking pressure on Israel,' and Americans because the U.S. is 'funding much of the killing.'
Why it matters: Zohar's threat — issued hours after the film won the Venice special jury prize and a record 24.5-minute standing ovation — escalates state-level targeting of Israeli cultural producers whose work documents Gaza casualties, attaching a citizenship-revocation penalty to internationally acclaimed filmmaking that examines military conduct.
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