Critic Reviews

It’s likely to shake you to your core — not because of what facts might be revealed (much of this information is already out there), but rather because of the stirring form in which they come to light.

The spare, focused style of Naza has a grim, artful beauty, all in service of the subject matter. The results are impossible to shake.

This sober and thoroughly documented bombshell of an exposé, in which two dozen IDF intelligence officers detail the systematic targeting and murdering of civilians in Gaza since October 7th — how it was carried out deliberately and with state-of-the-art precision — also leaves one with a deadening feeling, as if humanity may have lost all hope.

NAZA is an anguishing testament to inhumanity.

NAZA puts together a restrained, intelligent, articulate, precise and utterly damning case against Israel’s actions in Gaza and their ongoing actions through the region. As a work of cinema, it is exemplary. As a work of journalism, it is inarguable. As a document, it is an indictment.

In its systematic, neutral-toned way of conveying information about Israel’s policy-driven perpetration of genocidal war crimes, it’s a more effective and urgent documentary than “No Other Land.”

There’s a chilling effect to this that is quite similar to the one achieved by Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest: a city’s life is another city’s death, just a few miles away, to the indifference or outright enjoyment of the people who are perpetrating it.

The intimacy of these interviews is powerful, and creates an unsettling paradox. Even at their most off-puttingly horrific you are drawn into these discussions. That speaks to the power of the filmmaking and of documentary itself and, indeed, while the movie can be shocking, its revelations are similar to what’s been published earlier.

Very, very few films, no matter how great or important, are actually urgent. You’ll get around to it eventually; it’ll be stuck in time waiting for you. But NAZA is urgent, an essential film, a living document in conversation with the most pressing issue in the world right now.

It conveys its explosive message in a deeply and stylishly cinematic way. Interviews, conducted under the cover of night, take on a ritual, confessional quality. They are edited and arranged to create a series of chapters that ramp up the shock incrementally but also create a series of internal echoes.