Naza: the zone of truth (review)

The documentary focusing on the testimonies of Israeli soldiers responsible for the destruction of Gaza City hits theaters on October 12 and 13. A political and aesthetic shock.

The duo of Israeli filmmakers and journalists Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham left us stunned with their documentary No Other Land (2024), co-directed with their Palestinian colleagues Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. The film denounced the intensification of the occupation of the West Bank by the IDF and the settlers, under the aegis of the Netanyahu government. This firebrand had triumphantly traveled the world until winning the Oscar in March 2025. The staging established a bridge between the outside (Israel) and the inside (the West Bank), thanks to a circulation – even constrained – of the gaze and the word.

With Nazapresented in theaters in France on October 12 and October 13 before being put online for free at the end of November, this circulation is annihilated by the very device of the film. The space is deliberately constrained, the horizon circumscribed. While the Gaza Strip has suffered incessant shelling from the IDF since the attacks of October 7, 2023, the filmmakers, who here intend to denounce the murderous logic, have decided to keep the chaos at bay. Their camera, like a lookout, observes the world from a rooftop in Tel Aviv…..