A 25-minute ovation is hardly a quiet way to announce your arrival. Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are on quite a run, following their 2025 Oscar win for No Other Land with NAZA’s Special Jury Prize at Venice in September 2026, where the documentary about automated military targeting systems in Gaza made a historic splash.

With so much attention swirling around Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, it is time to look beyond NAZA and meet the filmmakers behind the headlines.

Yuval Abraham’s story begins in Beersheba, where he was born in 1995 into a middle-class Jewish family with a remarkably layered history. His family background spans Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, with his grandparents carrying stories shaped by persecution, migration, and life across the region. Those family stories added unusual depth to Abraham’s upbringing.

Long before documentary cameras entered the picture, Abraham was building a career in investigative journalism. He wrote for +972 Magazine and Local Call, developing a reputation for reporting that examined complex systems and institutions. Alongside journalism, Abraham learned Arabic after spending two years working with Israeli and Palestinian children, adding another distinctive chapter to his early career.

That path eventually led Abraham toward filmmaking, with No Other Land becoming the defining early chapter of his cinematic career. The 2024 documentary earned the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film, firmly placing Abraham among the filmmakers attracting international attention, and he has now received renewed attention with NAZA.

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With NAZA now making its way to free online streaming and Yuval Abraham’s story in focus, it is finally Rachel Szor’s turn in the spotlight.

If Yuval Abraham brings the investigative instincts, Rachel Szor brings the eye that turns those stories into cinema. Born in 1994 and raised in Tel Aviv, Szor has kept her private life considerably quieter than her filmmaking career. Her parents still live there, while her own work has taken her behind the camera and into some extraordinary circumstances.

Based in Jerusalem, Szor works across cinematography, editing, and directing, bringing a distinctly observational sensibility to each role. Her work is marked by patient editing and an ability to remain visually attentive when circumstances are anything but ordinary. As the cinematographer and co-director of No Other Land, Szor became an essential part of the film’s intimate visual language.

Her filmmaking range became even more apparent with NAZA, where Szor served as principal cinematographer while continuing her directing and editing work. The project demanded a particularly careful visual approach, adding another striking chapter to a career already spanning several filmmaking disciplines. With Rachel Szor now completing the picture, the story of NAZA’s filmmakers comes full circle.

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Do you like Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham even more after finding out more about them? Let us know in the comments!