NAZA confronts a disturbing question: how does someone participate in lethal military operations while understanding the work as an ordinary technical assignment? Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the documentary approaches the war in Gaza through interviews with 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers. Robert Daniels’s review describes testimony gathered between 2023 and 2025 and identifies a defining limitation: Palestinian people are the subject of these accounts without supplying the film’s interviewing perspective. [Robert Daniels’s review](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/naza-film-documentary-review-2026)
The film’s potential importance as a historical document lies in that uncomfortable position. Insiders can describe how decisions become procedures, and how procedures become explanations for personal conduct. Listening closely means asking what their explanations reveal—and what they leave unresolved.
Content note: Discussion of civilian deaths, surveillance, and testimony about military violence follows. This critical analysis draws on published descriptions of the film and reported dialogue; it is not a firsthand screening review.
The speakers’ language is the central drama
These are documentary participants, so a character-focused reading requires particular care. They cannot responsibly be assigned invented motives or treated as fictional figures moving toward a predetermined redemption. Their language, however, offers a basis for examining how they present themselves.
Two short statements reported in Ben Croll’s review establish the tension. One participant says, “We have to describe things as they really are.” Another offers, “My role is technical.” The film also includes the statement, “I’m not allowed to express any moral positions.” Together, those remarks place disclosure beside an attempted boundary around responsibility. [Ben Croll’s review](https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/naza-review-israel-gaza-documentary/)
My reading is that the word technical carries the greatest weight. It identifies a skill while potentially narrowing the speaker’s account of agency. Someone may operate only one part of a system, yet that limited assignment does not settle what the person understands about its consequences.
The distinction matters when listening. A description of an assigned task answers what an employee did. It does not automatically answer what choices were available, what objections were possible, or what the employee knew. Those questions should remain open wherever the testimony cannot resolve them.
Surveillance changes the meaning of a family home
Associated Press reporting describes participants’ accounts of surveillance, artificial intelligence used to identify potential Hamas targets, and attacks on homes where families were present. These are allegations communicated through military insiders; identifying them as testimony preserves the distinction between what the documentary records and what an outside investigation can independently establish. [Associated Press coverage](https://apnews.com/article/0bfc5f6b2ac5e6cb31728c4a9e776995)
The most consequential shift in perspective is from a household as a place of relationships to a household as information. To the people living there, a relative’s arrival belongs to everyday life. Within a targeting process, the same event can become an operational signal. The moral stakes emerge from those incompatible meanings occupying the same moment.
This makes the technical language especially troubling. A system may sort information efficiently while excluding the things that give that information human significance. Accuracy about someone’s location cannot, by itself, answer whether an action should follow.
Our commentary on AI and the question of human control considers responsibility in a very different context. Here, the stakes demand a sharper distinction: identifying a technological tool is only the beginning. The essential questions concern the people who set its purpose, accept its outputs, and authorize consequences.
Why the nighttime rooftops matter
The rooftop setting is part of the film’s documented design. The San Sebastián festival lists Rachel Szor as cinematographer and describes a documentary filmed at night above Tel Aviv. That establishes a physical separation between the interview setting and the violence being discussed. [San Sebastián’s film listing](https://www.sansebastianfestival.com/2026/sections_and_films/7/747374/in)
As a visual idea, that separation has force. A rooftop offers a broad view while withholding access to the individual lives behind windows. It can make a city appear legible at precisely the scale where its inhabitants become difficult to distinguish.
My interpretation is that this tension gives the setting more than atmospheric value. The viewer is asked to consider the limits of looking from a distance. Seeing buildings does not mean understanding households; seeing patterns does not mean knowing the people those patterns represent.
There is also a limit to this reading. A cityscape cannot establish the beliefs or conduct of everyone within it. The image can support an argument about proximity and detachment without becoming evidence of collective guilt. As our discussion of what a filmed location can and cannot establish emphasizes, interpretation needs to remain proportionate to what an image actually shows.
Anonymous testimony has value and limits
Eli Friedberg’s account describes digitally concealed identities and interviewees whose responses differ: some discuss their work with detachment, while others struggle with complicity. One reportedly says, “It’s like a video game.” That comparison is revealing as a participant’s description of experience; it is not a complete explanation of the institution or everyone working within it. [Eli Friedberg’s review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/naza-review-yuval-abraham-rachel-szor/)
Anonymity can make disclosures possible, but it restricts what viewers can examine for themselves. Emotional conviction does not independently corroborate an allegation. Neither does a restrained delivery disprove it. The appropriate response is to attend to the substance of each account, its stated scope, and the evidence available beyond the speaker’s presentation.
For the same reason, speaking openly should not automatically be read as redemption. Disclosure, regret, and accountability are different things. A documentary can preserve the first without establishing the other two.
The deeper question: who remains visible?
The strongest interpretive approach to NAZA keeps returning to the people affected by the operations its participants describe. Insider testimony can illuminate procedures that outsiders cannot easily observe. It can also draw attention toward the insiders’ feelings at the expense of those who suffered the consequences.
That is the film’s central ethical tension. Understanding how someone performs a task matters because the task affects other lives. The speaker’s self-understanding must never become the only life the viewer is invited to consider.
As a historical document, NAZA deserves scrutiny as well as attention. Its reported testimony preserves accounts that can be examined, challenged, and compared with other evidence. Its deeper challenge is to the comforting belief that responsibility disappears when work is divided into small assignments. A limited role can still have consequences far beyond the person performing it.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: October 1, 2026 at 22:51:46 PDT (Los Angeles time)
