Mick Hartley

I would just like to add that last week, a producer of Can I Go Home Now, a documentary which focuses specifically on Ukrainian children's experiences of what Russia has done to them, told me that the Venice Biennale had blocked the film being screened there, at Russia's urging. https://t.co/tH4TgzyqWT pic.twitter.com/yeL2hhhOZ7

— Daniel Sugarman (@Daniel_Sugarman) September 14, 2026

This is in the context of the record 24 minute standing ovation for the Naza film, which plays to every anti-Israel canard about Gaza by accusing the IDF of deliberately targeting civilians – which is exactly what Hamas does. It was made by Israeli Jews, too, so of course the culture crowd just went crazy – led by actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, chair of the jury at the festival, who just “loved it”, and made the grotesque comparison to The Zone of Interest film about Auschwitz.

Leni Riefenstahl won top honours at Venice in 1938.

From Jake Wallis Simons at the JC, on “this new and repulsive documentary by hard-Left Israeli filmmakers”:

The film, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, premiered at the Venice Film Festival this month. It received a 25-minute standing ovation – of course it did – and walked off with the festival’s Special Jury Prize.

Its title, appropriately, is the Hebrew military acronym for “collateral damage”. Twenty-four anonymous Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers described a war machine that, on their account, killed Gazan civilians “not by accident. But by design.” The genius of the propaganda, of course, is that they dug out unhinged Israelis – Israelis! – to condemn themselves (see Theobald of Cambridge).

One person calls it “mass killing on an industrial scale.” Another criticised an AI targeting system, nicknamed “Lavender”. Al Jazeera’s own write-up needed no persuading, covering the premiere under the headline “the Israeli film revealing new layers of the Gaza genocide.” The verdict was reached before the lights were even up, which, as a symbol, tells you everything you need to know about everything.

None of it can be checked. The IDF’s rebuttal is blunt: the witnesses’ identities, ranks and units cannot be verified, and several of them claim knowledge of “national strategy” that, as the army drily points out, junior soldiers are not generally briefed on. A film built entirely on testimony nobody can name, and nobody can cross-examine, is not evidence. It is a very well-edited blood libel, produced by unhinged Israelis, now with a Golden Lion nomination.