Israel Minister of Culture Wants to Revoke Oscar-Winning Filmmakers’ Citizenship Over New Film

The filmmakers behind the 2024 documentary No Other Land have experienced numerous ups and downs since the movie won Best Documentary at the 2025 Oscars: Mere weeks after the ceremony, co-director Hamdan Ballal was arrested by Israeli authorities after being attacked by West Bank settlers. In July 2025, a consultant on the film was shot and killed. And now co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are being targeted by the Israeli government, as Israeli Minister of Culture Miki Zohar has said the filmmakers’ new film NAZA “constitutes treason.” The Venice Film Festival’s official synopsis of NAZA explains that “the film reveals in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” As The Hollywood Reporter writes, Zohar has used his X account to make multiple comments on NAZA‘s festival premiere, including the declaration that “I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for betraying the state.” Abraham and Szor, in their directors’ statement, reveal that: We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israelis to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian c...