The necessary risk of exposure

Translated by Mariateresa Tauro

After watching Naza, the first thing you wonder is how much of ourselves we are prepared to entrust to others. It is not an abstract question.  It is a question that has to do with the body, with shame, with the desire to be seen, and with the equally strong fear of actually being seen. Because putting yourself out there isn’t just showing off. It means losing control over what will happen next, over the way we will be perceived, judged and remembered.

Naza is a film that begins precisely there: at the moment when someone decides that silence has become more unbearable than the risk of speaking out.

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who previously co-wrote No Other Land, have chosen a form that speaks volumes even before the story begins. Twenty-four Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers are interviewed anonymously, at night, on the rooftops of Tel Aviv. Their faces are hidden, their voices distorted. We do not see war as we are used to: there are no spectacular images of bombing, no bodies shown to shock the viewer, no ruins used as immediate evidence of the horror. People are talking. In the darkness.

It is a cinematic choice, but also a moral one. In Naza, speaking means putting yourself out there without ever truly being recognised. It is a paradoxical form of testimony: to tell the truth, one must, at the same time, hide oneself.

We live in a culture that has convinced us that being visible is the same as existing. We take photos, share stories, comment and take a stand. Our identity is constantly shaped by what we share publicly. But Naza reminds us that there is another side to visibility: one in which being seen means becoming vulnerable, and the film’s interviewees are well aware of this. Their comments touch on surveillance systems, artificial intelligence, military procedures and the criteria used to identify targets. The film thus adopts a technical language that serves a specific purpose: to render death abstract. One of the central themes of Naza is precisely the way in which a term such as ‘collateral damage’ can turn a person into a variable, a dead person into a number, and a responsibility into a procedure. The title itself refers to the military term nezek agavi, which is used to describe collateral damage.

Because war also begins with the words that make it bearable. And this is where Naza becomes more than just a documentary on current affairs. It turns into a film about distance. The distance between those who make the decisions and those who die. Between those who utter a technical term and those who are subjected to it. Between a person’s actual body and the number through which that body is recorded. It is a distance that affects us as well. Because watching Naza means taking a stand. Not necessarily a political stance: the film has already taken one, quite unequivocally. But a human choice: to decide whether to keep watching or to look away.

For Abraham and Szor, the issue of exposure is particularly significant: they are Israelis who have chosen to offer a critical account of what is happening, drawing on testimonies from within the Israeli military apparatus. The film therefore does not stem from an external perspective, but from an internal rift. And perhaps this is precisely what makes Naza so difficult to categorise. It isn’t a film that simply asks, ‘Whose side are you on?’. It asks something even more challenging: what are you prepared to risk in order not to stop watching?

This is the paradox from which Naza refuses to let us escape: keeping silent may protect us, but it may also make us complicit in our own repression. Perhaps that is why this film is needed right now. Not because cinema has the power to stop a war, nor because ninety minutes can resolve a political issue that has been going on for decades. It is necessary because, in an age saturated with images, it reminds us that seeing is not enough. We must listen. And after listening, we must decide what to do with what we have heard.

In the end, one is left with a distinct feeling: that of having been confronted with something we can no longer pretend not to know about.

Mondo Internazionale APS - Riproduzione Riservata ® 2026