THE NEW documentary NAZA tells the story of the Gaza genocide in perhaps the most incriminating way possible: through the recorded admissions of the genociders themselves.

A smash hit on this year's festival circuit, NAZA was made by two Israeli filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The pair previously collaborated with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballaj on the Academy Award-winning 2024 documentary No Other Land.

The local group Cinema Savannah – which screened No Other Land here when it was unable to get a U.S. distributor and was effectively blackballed – will bring NAZA to Savannah this Sunday night at the Otis Johnson Cultural Arts Center.

The Savannahian spoke with Cinema Savannah director Tomasz Warchol about NAZA, a film so chilling that many audience members have been reduced to sobs or just wordless silence by the end.

“It’s mostly set at night. It’s all about interviewing Israeli soldiers, who have their voices altered. It’s actually very basic,” Warchol says.

While No Other Land mostly focused on experiences of Palestinians in the West Bank, NAZA interviews 24 anonymous Israeli soldiers, mostly on Tel Aviv rooftops, about their personal experiences in Gaza.

Interviewing soldiers who actually performed and witnessed war crimes in Gaza, Warchol says, “is the only way get the truth” about the horrifying scale of genocidal intent.

These aren’t whistleblowers per se. Many of the soldiers interviewed show little or no remorse about their actions. Some are proud of what they’ve done. One specifically admits Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

NAZA's title is an acronym for the Hebrew words nezek agavi, or collateral damage. In Israeli soldiers’ own words, nearly every Palestinian in Gaza of any age is qualified to be a target to be killed by airstrikes, drones, snipers, or machine guns.

Each mission is assigned a NAZA number. A basic mission might have an approved NAZA of 20, meaning 20 innocent and uninvolved Palestinian civilians could lose their lives for one military target.

A higher-level mission might have a NAZA of 500, essentially the entire population of a typical Palestinian village.

The accounts of the Israeli soldiers sometimes defy comprehension.

One soldier describes the level of penetration into Palestinian lives he was able to gain through the use of the AI-controlled weapons system the Israelis ghoulishly call "Where's Daddy."

"Where's Daddy" enables the Israeli army to listen to children's conversations on cellphones to geolocate their parents' location for targeting with drones. Nearly every cellphone in Gaza is hacked and subject to this enhanced AI targeting.

Predictably, the angry reaction in Israel against the film has boomeranged and only brought NAZA even more attention.

“NAZA has been in the news, especially after the reaction from Netanyahu,” Warchol says, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who himself has arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for overseeing the Gaza genocide.

“Netanyahu opened an investigation into which IDF soldiers cooperated with the documentary, threatening to charge them with treason. He says none of the claims are verifiable. In that case, why would there need to be an investigation of who spilled the beans?” muses Warchol.

Netanyahu’s government has also threatened the filmmakers themselves with stripping their Israeli citizenship.

The UK newspaper and website The Guardian is the producer of NAZA, so it is technically a British production. The film actually builds on previous journalism which corroborates most everything in the anonymous soldiers' accounts.

“This wasn’t just a regular booking. It was more work than usual,” Warchol says in an understatement. “There’s been quite an unusual rollout. They are very protective about the screening, to keep it from being pirated.”

Part of the negotiations involve Warchol being sent a streaming link via the encrypted Signal app. Cinema Savannah will have at most a 48-hour window to view and screen the link, after which it will be disabled.

Following NAZA's premieres, The Guardian has decided to make the film free for everyone to see. NAZA premieres in The Guardian’s home country on Oct. 16 and is scheduled for international streaming release next month.

“The Guardian wanted to eventually make NAZA available to as many people as possible. They’ve promised to stream it for free. They’ve confirmed that it will be available for streaming from their website at the end of November,” Warchol says.

Still, if there’s one lesson we’ve learned, it’s the difficulty of getting the message out about the genocide in Gaza.

“In this country I can anticipate the creation of obstacles to people being able to stream it,” Warchol says. “Let's just say I would consider it not completely confirmed that people will actually be allowed to stream it in United States.”

All the more reason to attend the screening in person this Sunday evening.

NAZA screens Sunday Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. at the Otis Johnson Cultural Affairs Center, 201 Montgomery St. Tickets are $10 at www.cinemasavannah.com or at the door.