Former Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza reacted to the documentary NAZA on Monday after the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday and received a nearly 25-minute standing ovation after it was screened last Thursday.
The film has sparked widespread backlash across Israel, drawing reactions from officials and civil society alike.
Rom Braslavski, who spent 738 days as a hostage in Gaza, posted on X/Twitter saying that Yuval Avraham and Rachel Szor, the directors of the documentary, were “traitors” and that “they should be sent to prison.”
Eliya Cohen also took to social media to vent his frustration with the film and its directors, saying in an Instagram video post that “Something must be done… a lesson that will make them understand that they are not welcome in Israel.”
The former hostage spent over 500 days in Gaza in Hamas captivity and said he was subjected to starvation and torture at the hands of Hamas.
'A movie that completely erases what we've been through'
In his post on Instagram, Cohen says he was “afraid of the citizens I met there; I was even more afraid of the Hamas terrorists,” describing his reaction to the Gazans he met.
He blasted the NAZA documentary and the filmmakers, accusing them of making a “movie that completely erases what we’ve been through, reverses reality and presents a one-sided story.”
NAZA is set to premiere at the New York Film Festival on September 26, but no public release for the documentary has been announced yet.