The people responsible for sending out the drones and missles to level Gaza, as well as soldiers who were tasked with burning down the homes of the people who fled the bombing so they would have nothing to come back to, speak to the filmmakers and calmly tell the stories of many (but not all) of the terrible things they did.
Before the New York Festival screening of NAZA there were some quiet protests. Box trucks with LED screens drove around the festival site saying that the stories of NAZA were false and hand not confirmed. There were also four protesters holding signs outside Alice Tully. They had not seen the film.
The audience inside Alice Tully was openly sobbing during the screening. Several people around me took out their rosaries and were praying. The film laid the the audience out. Finally the weight of what was happening was sinking into the public. The war crimes are at last being noticed.
The point of the film, as stated by the directors during the Q&A, is not to dispute the right of Israel to defend itself or to get justice for the 1200 people killed on October 7 but to question the right of a government to kill well over 75,000 people, wound almost 200,000 more, and destroy the homes of even more in attacks that are exponetially greater. The want to know why all this death and destruction against people who have almost no connection to the bad guys, and simply living in the same building as them. Why is it necessary to wipe out the homes of people who simply share their national background and did nothing wrong on October 7, and drive them into the desert without food or water or shelter? The point is to make an accounting of the crimes being committed not against the people responsible but everyone around them. As one person said it was sometimes okay to take out 500 innocent people to get one suspected bad guy. What sort of madness makes that okay?
The mind boggles even more when you consider that the choice of targets is often picked by an AI program that is frequently wrong. Yes- the Israeli military is using an AI program to choose its targets but it often picks the wrong people.
Is it any wonder people are upset? Not only are war crimes being revealed but so is gross incompetence.
While the audience around me was left broken, the film was a bit less moving me. It was not because of the lack of weight of the film and it's revelations but because, as a good friend pointed out, I have been aware of this bullshit for years. Within my circle and social media follows I have been hearing about all of the charges leveled here since they started. I have read the articles upon which this film is based when they first appeared. This is a one stop shop for those who haven't been paying attention. For those who have been paying attention is this a somber summing up that rocks the soul.
As a film I can't really review it. This is not a film so much as pained cry from caring humans who want to pain and suffering to stop. Its a film made by Israelis who want to their country to come to their senses and stop killing people. Its the culmination of two years of work that puts it all together so that people can bare witness (and who, as made clear in the film, are remaining in the shadows because the evil that is directing the attacks on innocent people would turn and attack them). This is a scream not a piece of cinema.
NAZA is a vital and a live film. It is a call for peace and sanity. It is a film looking to find the better part of humanity by revealing its dakest heart. You must see this film.
Because of the need to get the film out so that people can see it, the film will be released to theaters and on line in the next couple of days. The hope is that with the release changes will come. And perhaps many of the voices who are claiming it is all not true will see that it is true- that it all is horribly and terribly true.
No comments:
Post a Comment