The three-part documentary series has already secured top spot in the top 10 charts
Natalee Holloway vanished on a graduation trip to Aruba (Image: Netflix)
True crime fans are being urged to stop what they are doing and binge watch a brand new release that is guaranteed to have your jaw on the floor.
There are plenty of choices at our disposal when it comes to deciding what to watch, but streaming giant Netflix has recently dropped a brand new true crime documentary that everyone needs to get on their watch list.
In what has been dubbed an emotional rollercoaster of a series, the brand new release is from the same producers as Maternal Instinct as it plunges viewers into a 20 year fight for answers.
Titled Taken: Natalee Holloway, the three-part documentary was released on November 4 and has already secured the top spot in the top 10 Series in the UK Today.
An official synopsis teases: “On May 30, 2005, 18-year-old Natalee Holloway vanished on a high school graduation trip to Aruba — and never came home. What followed was years of unanswered questions, a missing teenager, and a mother’s relentless fight for the truth.
“Now, over 20 years later, Natalee’s mother, Beth, is ready to tell the complete story. With exclusive, unprecedented access to Beth and those who were with Natalee when she vanished, this three-part documentary series from Story Syndicate (Maternal Instinct, Titan: The Oceangate Disaster) and directors Dani Sloane and Matthew Galkin is the definitive account of a case that gripped a nation and never let go.
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“It’s a story of a mother who refused to stop searching, an investigation that spanned continents, and a daughter whose memory endures. This is Natalee’s story, told at last in full.”
Spanning across three episodes, viewers are already hooked as one person admitted on TikTok: “I am disgusted by this documentary.” They later added: “This documentary takes you on a whirlwind of events, literally 20 years until they get answers.”
In a separate video, another true crime fan praised: “You need to stop whatever your doing, cancel all of your plans and forget about everything else on Netflix because this documentary is about to be number one trending.
“I’m telling you right now everybody is going to be talking about this documentary, my jaw was on the floor watching it.” Another replied: “I’ve just finished it can’t believe what I’ve watched.”
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Over on Facebook, one person penned: “I just watched Taken: The Natalee Holloway Story on Netflix, and I am absolutely disgusted and heartbroken.”
Another echoed: “No I have the full body chills right now. Cannot believe it took that long. And the WhatsApp literally had me screaming”, as a third added: “Natalee’s case has always haunted me.”
On IMDb, a reviewer echoed: “This is a shocking, disturbing and often sickening story, but an important one to tell… Ultimately, this is as much a story about a mother’s love and determination as it is about a horrific crime. A compelling documentary that stays with you long after the final episode.”
Taken: Natalee Holloway can be streamed on Netflix
Audiences who saw Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s hit documentary “You Can See Everything” may have left the theater with a few questions about Elizabeth Holmes and her longtime partner Billy Evans. While the former Theranos CEO is serving time in a Texas federal prison, Evans is active on X and fielding burning questions inspired by the documentary.
If you’ve haven’t yet seen the film, spoilers ahead.
Evans, 34, comes from a wealthy family who owns a luxury resort in San Diego. He and Holmes have two children, a 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, and while Holmes serves an 11-year prison sentence, Evans is raising their kids, pursuing a new biotech venture and running the couple’s X accounts.
In “You Can See Everything,” Evans bares it all for the cameras, revealing everything from his nude body in the shower to his intense personality, among other questionable traits that have been widely discussed since the film hit theaters last month.
On Monday afternoon, he participated in an “AMA” (Ask Me Anything), and fans of the film flooded the comments.
Holmes’ parents, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV (a former vice president at Enron’s Clean Energy Solutions Group) and Noel Anne Holmes (née Daoust), both appear in the film, but as Fielder attempts to interview Holmes’ father, Evans becomes increasingly agitated.
On X, @kalmiavtuber asks, “My biggest question is, Billy, why did you stop Nathan from speaking to Liz’s father? Both Nathan and the audience saw it as integral to the documentary to truly ‘see everything.’ It felt like a missed opportunity that could have continued to give Liz more light.”
Evans replied, “She was going to prison. We had 3 days [together] at the time. I wanted to spend that time together. He interviewed her parents after she went in. They chose not to include that in the film. I didn’t control the edit. If there was something the directors wanted from them they had multiple opportunities to get it.”
One question popped up again and again, in various iterations: “Why did you keep sniffing throughout the documentary?”
And according to Evans, it wasn’t drug-induced sinus issues but, rather, germ- and Texas-induced. He said being a single dad to two toddlers makes him sick “approx 75% of days.” And, “Allergies in Austin TX are no joke. I take Claritin daily. Much less sniffling.”
And as for the blood testing device that Holmes spread out onto the kitchen table — the one that Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz said was not the same device that sent Holmes to prison but, rather, a future version of the Theranos product that was never used and never completed — @insistent_dw asked, “If the Theranos machine really worked as Liz said it did, why did it have to be dug out of storage containers in multiple pieces? I’d expect something like that to be locked in a safe and protected if it’s the prized machine behind a once billion dollar company.”
Evans replied, “Fair question. Theranos had been shut down for years, so naturally the hardware was in storage. We deliberately showed a disassembled device to show its internal components, not because that was all that remained. To my knowledge, 16 complete, functioning devices still exist. And Liz wasn’t reading a script. She was reading directly from the trial transcript. The litigation was still ongoing when we filmed.”
Farther down into the thread, one X user asks, “Have you ever told a lie?” To which Evans replies, “Yes.”
And @alexandraandnyc asked Evans to dispel one misconception from the film: “That I somehow control Liz,” Evans replied. “Anyone who actually knows her would find that idea hilarious.”
“She’s fiercely independent, strongwilled, and my best friend. We are partners in every sense. We challenge each other, disagree, and face the world together. Her closest friends are also some of my closest friends. If I ever mistreated her, they’d have my head.”
While it may have surprised audiences, “You Can See Everything,” landed an R-rating for its graphic nudity. One scene in particular features a full-frontal of Evans, and the dad of two has since said that he wasn’t thrilled with the shower scene making it into the film. When X users pressed him on allowing the cameras into the room, he pointed to a People article that featured anonymous sources saying Evans felt exploited and thought the scene would be kept PG.
“Trust the sources,” he said, alongside a link to the story.
Oppenheim, however, told Vulture last month that Evans seemed to initiate the scene: “It seems like he really had something he wanted to show to us and to the world.”
A Netflix documentary has been described as ‘disturbing’ and ‘jaw-dropping’ by viewers, who say it’s ‘impossible to turn off’. Give it a go if you’re struggling to find something to watch
People have been struggling to switch it off (stock)(Image: Netflix)
Everyone with a Netflix subscription knows how overwhelming it can be to find something good to watch. And sometimes, they give up altogether, heading to bed without ever making it past the title screen.
But one user claims there’s no need to waste precious time searching on this occasion, as he’s got the ideal documentary recommendation – and believes everyone will soon be discussing it. EccyReviews, who watches and critiques films and television programmes across his social media channels, is encouraging Netflix subscribers to give Tell Me Who I Am a watch.
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What’s the plot?
The 2019 documentary chronicles the story of Alex Lewis, who suffered memory loss after an accident.
Its IMDb description reads: “Alex Lewis trusts his twin brother, Marcus, to tell him about his past only to discover that he’s hiding a dark secret about their childhood.”
Speaking about the documentary, EccyReviews said: “You’re going to be running to Netflix to go and watch this documentary because it is one of the most insane stories you will ever hear.
“Everyone I know who’s seen this documentary cannot stop talking about it. The documentary I’m talking about is called Tell Me Who I Am.
“It follows a young man who after a motorcycle accident, wakes up to find he has lost his complete memory.
“He doesn’t know who his brother is, who his father is or even his own mother. And when he returns home he knows that there is something strange going on in his house.
“After years and years of never really speaking about his past, he meets up with his brother across this table to find out his entire backstory.
“Now it is genuinely disturbing, emotional and jaw dropping once you hear what happened to him. And honestly, if you haven’t seen this documentary you are massively missing out. So get it on your watch list right now.”
Where to watch Tell Me Who I Am?
The documentary is available to stream on Netflix in a single viewing, with a runtime of one hour and 26 minutes.
If you’re more in to reading, the book is also available to purchase, having become a Sunday Times bestseller.
What do people say?
Commenting on the recommendation, one TikTok user said: “I don’t have the patience to watch full documentaries, but this actually had me glued to the tele, it’s so disturbing because it’s true, I’ll ask the question for everyone, would you have told him?”
Another added: “What an incredible story. Heartbreaking. An incredible watch.”
A third user said: “Watched this before and highly recommend… it’s so upsetting in parts but will keep you hooked.”
Elizabeth Holmes is the convicted fraudster at the center of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s hit documentary “You Can See Everything,” but for many viewers, it’s her longtime partner, Billy Evans, who has emerged as the film’s marquee villain.
Evans, 34, comes from a wealthy San Diego hotel family and stood by Holmes as her blood-testing startup Theranos collapsed and she was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors. The couple has two children, 5-year-old son William and 3-year-old daughter Invicta. With Holmes serving an 11-year federal prison sentence in Texas, Evans is raising their children while pursuing a new biotech venture of his own.
In the film — warning: spoilers ahead — Evans comes across as controlling and increasingly volatile, taking over from Holmes as she whisks eggs, interrupting an interview to demand that the cameras be turned off and at one point casually brushing his teeth while standing stark naked in the shower, with Fielder awkwardly looking on. He speaks of Holmes dedicating her life to building “monuments of love” to him, and in one heated confrontation threatens to ruin the lives of people he believes have wronged her. “I’ve got vengeance in my heart,” he declares.
So who is Evans, how did he end up with one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous figures and what is he up to now?
What do we know about Evans’ upbringing?
Evans grew up in a wealthy, prominent San Diego family. His grandparents, William and Anne Evans, founded Evans Hotels in 1953, opening what became the Bahia Resort Hotel on Mission Bay. The family business later expanded to include the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa and the Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla.
Evans attended Francis Parker School, an exclusive private school in San Diego, before graduating from MIT with a degree in economics in 2015. Despite his family’s wealth, Evans is neither an employee nor a shareholder of Evans Hotels, according to a statement the company issued Oct. 1.
His family reportedly had reservations about his relationship with Holmes at first. But his father, also named William, became a supporter — and even went undercover of sorts at her 2021 fraud trial. According to NPR, the elder Evans showed up for jury selection under the name “Hanson,” introducing himself to reporters as a concerned citizen who fixed up old cars for a living. His expensive loafers and a Starbucks cup bearing a different name eventually raised suspicions.
How did Evans meet Holmes?
The two met Oct. 7, 2017, at a Fleet Week party hosted by a venture capitalist in San Francisco, according to Evans. Theranos was already engulfed in scandal, though Holmes had yet to be criminally charged.
In the documentary, Evans recalls that he initially didn’t recognize Holmes because she was wearing a floppy hat, dark sunglasses and a Band-Aid on her face from a scratch by her husky. He says he fell in love with her almost immediately. When Fielder points out that he could barely see her face, Evans replies, “I guess that wasn’t what mattered to me.”
Nathan Fielder observes Elizabeth Holmes with her family in “You Can See Everything.”
(A24)
Holmes says the attraction was mutual. The two became friends and started dating about six months later, just weeks before she was indicted on federal fraud charges.
Fielder asks Evans whether he worried early on that Holmes might be conning him. “100%,” Evans replies, before asking what she would have had to gain from him. “Well, isn’t your family rich?” Fielder asks.
Pressed about the family’s money, Evans grows visibly uncomfortable and cuts the conversation short, saying he needs to get to a cousin’s event.
How is Evans managing life with Holmes in prison?
Since Holmes entered federal prison in May 2023, Evans has been raising their two children in Austin, Texas, bringing them to visit her at the federal prison camp in Bryan. Holmes is expected to transfer to a halfway house outside Austin in August.
In an appearance last week on the tech podcast “All-In,” Evans described the difficulty of the experience. “It’s hard because I’m building a business and I’m trying to free my wife from federal prison and I’m raising two kids,” he said.
Though Evans routinely refers to Holmes as his wife, Holmes said in a 2025 interview from prison with People that they had not legally married: “Maybe we’ll get married someday, but our bond is more than a piece of paper.” The two got engaged in 2018, reportedly at a Taylor Swift concert.
Is Evans trying to revive Theranos?
After graduating from MIT, Evans reportedly attempted to launch a medical concierge service before working at companies including LinkedIn and Luminar Technologies, which developed lidar systems for autonomous vehicles.
In 2022, he founded Haemanthus, a biotech startup developing technology to analyze biological samples using lasers. The company hopes to make diagnostic testing cheaper and more accessible — a mission that may sound awfully familiar to anyone who followed the rise and fall of Theranos.
Haemanthus has reportedly raised millions of dollars but has yet to release a commercial product. Eric Potma, a UC Irvine chemistry professor who consults for the company, told Wired this week that its technology is worth exploring despite significant technical challenges. “The engineers at Haemanthus are legit,” he said.
Holmes’ name does not appear in Haemanthus’ incorporation documents, according to Wired. But in the documentary, the couple is shown discussing plans for a new diagnostic venture, with Evans speaking openly about his desire to revive her original ambitions.
“The idea is to put the band back together and do it all again,” Evans tells Fielder.
How has Evans responded to ‘You Can See Everything’?
Evans and Holmes agreed to participate in the documentary in hopes of changing the public perception of her. Early in the film, Evans explains that they wanted to give the filmmakers extraordinary access to their daily lives, embracing what he calls “radical transparency.”
But Evans’ commitment to transparency had its limits. In the film, he repeatedly tries to shut down uncomfortable conversations and, in a meeting reenacted for the cameras, demands a share of the documentary’s profits — an arrangement Fielder fears could compromise the project’s integrity. Evans ultimately agreed to forgo payment.
“We felt Billy was trying to exert a lot of control over the process, and it sort of caused our communication to break down a little bit,” Fielder said during a Q&A after the screening. “The challenging thing is he’s sort of a conduit to her.”
Speaking on the “All-In” podcast before seeing the finished movie, Evans acknowledged that participating might turn out to be a mistake. “I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “I might think this is like the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
Evans attended a private screening of the documentary on Oct. 16, followed by an off-the-record conversation with Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur known for his elaborate efforts to reverse aging.
In a post on X the following day, Johnson called the film “a masterpiece” and described Evans as “magnanimous in conversation.” Though Johnson said he gave Evans every opportunity to defend himself and “strike back because Fielder roughed him up,” Evans declined.
Evans replied publicly, thanking Johnson for treating their conversation with care. “When the world is against you and the pain is so real,” Evans wrote, “it means so much to have people like you show such kindness.”
A former research engineer who worked closely with Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos says “You Can See Everything” doesn’t show, well, everything.
You may remember Tyler Shultz from HBO’s “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” or even the fictionalized series “The Dropout” starring Amanda Seyfried as the disgraced Theranos CEO. He was one of the whistleblowers who raised the alarm when Holmes’ blood-testing technology was not the revolutionary medical device she claimed it to be. Shultz met Holmes through his grandfather, former Secretary of State George Shultz, who sat on the Theranos board of directors and scored Shultz an internship at the medical diagnostic startup, which quickly evolved into a full-time position as a research engineer. During his eight months on the job, he realized something was terribly wrong.
“You Can See Everything” directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim may have fallen into Holmes’ carefully curated trap, Shultz warns in a new essay.
“I’ve had the displeasure of watching disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes at work not just over a three-hour film, but over the entirety of my adult life. I was an employee turned whistleblower at Theranos, my grandfather sat on her board, she came to my family holidays and birthday parties. I met her when I was 20, she went to prison when I was 32,” he wrote in a Stat News op-ed published Monday.
“I wish I could have told director Nathan Fielder what I told [New York Times reporter] John Carreyrou when he started investigating her: Do not underestimate Elizabeth Holmes.”
Los Angeles Times columnist Glenn Whipp wrote that the film leaves viewers with many questions: “about Holmes, about the slippery nature of truth and about the objectivity of documentary filmmaking itself.” The film, labeled a documentary, grossed $15 million this weekend, making it the second-highest-grossing opening for the genre.
But Shultz says that while “You Can See Everything” is an entertaining piece of art, it’s certainly not a documentary, and “it’s dangerous to pretend that it is.”
Shultz calls out what he says are misleading components of the film, including the blood-testing device that Holmes shows Fielder.
“Back to the Theranos device itself. During that scene, my wife had to squeeze my arm to prevent me from jumping out of my seat in the theater and screaming, ‘THAT IS NOT THE DEVICE,’” Shultz writes. “That was not the device I worked with 12 hours a day, not the device we hid from regulators, not the device that constantly failed quality controls, not the device we used to knowingly give patients inaccurate medical results. The device she showed Fielder on the kitchen table was not the reason she went to prison. Elizabeth showed him a future version of the Theranos product that was never completed and never used in order to lead Fielder down this BS semantic rabbit hole and to trick him into litigating the entirely wrong thing.”
The research engineer-turned-whistleblower also called out the quaint two-bedroom condo in which the film was shot, pointing out that Holmes had just recently lived with partner Billy Evans, whose family owns a luxury resort in San Diego, in an estate listed at $125 million.
He also raises questions about the abuse Holmes suffered at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, convicted fraudster and Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Shultz claims Holmes spotted Balwani’s abusive tendencies and clocked him as the perfect fall guy if things went south.
In the mindbending documentary “You Can See Everything,” comedian Nathan Fielder and professed inventor Elizabeth Holmes sit in her beach house staring at each other like gunslingers. Fielder is the creator of the TV series “The Rehearsal” and “Nathan for You” who constructs discombobulating sham realities that include bogus businesses such as Dumb Starbucks. Holmes is the former billionaire CEO of Theranos who pretended she’d built a revolutionary blood testing machine to squeeze investors for a few dollars more.
Each is an expert in the con. But Fielder is deadpan and cold where Holmes is earnest and warm — and he’s been nominated for Emmys while, in May of 2023 when the film begins, she’s about to serve an 11-year sentence in federal prison. As the camera cuts between close-ups of his narrowed eyes and her big, blue ones, Fielder tries to suss whether he can trust the famous fibber to be honest with him. The showdown is riveting.
“You’re being real right now?” Fielder asks, dubious.
Holmes beams. “I’m always being real,” she swears with a smile.
Her charm hits Fielder in the gut. His face stays neutral yet you can see his own confidence bleed out across the screen.
Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime”), “You Can See Everything” is the closest Fielder has come to making a traditional documentary. A thrillingly cringe-tastic interviewer, he blurts out blunt questions like a bungee jumper leaping off a bridge, including asking Holmes’ romantic and business partner Billy Evans, the heir to a San Diego boutique hotel chain, whether it’s possible a woman convicted of fraud might be with him for his money.
At nearly three hours long, “You Can See Everything” won’t bore you for a minute. The hook is right there in the title, Fielder’s challenge to the audience: Here’s how Holmes held up to his scrutiny — do we think she’s telling the truth? But be alert. Fielder remains a trickster. One shot in particular proves you can see everything while being blind to what you’re actually watching.
In the first half of the movie, Holmes and Evans, the father of her two young children, give the small crew complete access to their lives during her last weeks of freedom, including inviting Fielder to sleep in their guest bedroom. It’s an act of “radical transparency,” Evans says. As evidence, there’s a fully nude shot of Evans in the shower, testifying to the intimacy the subjects claim they’re granting the team and the confidence they have that the documentary will make them look great. (Evans also boasts that he’s “excellent” in the sack.)
Holmes maintains both her innocence and her eerie smile, a rictus of empathy. She constantly nods, subliminally snake-charming the listener into a sense of agreement. That assessment might be fair or it might be her reputation making you over-analyze her tics. Doubling down, she even insists she’s never told a lie in her life — a claim that momentarily leaves Fielder at a loss for words.
Yet at times, Holmes really does appear to be sincere. Once she surrenders herself to the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas (where, in an unmentioned coincidence, Epstein collaborator Ghislane Maxwell is also incarcerated), the tone shifts into film noir as Fielder struggles to reconcile Elizabeth Holmes’ dual identities. Is she the sweet-natured scientist, the only version of her he’s ever met, or a femme fatale who may still be running a scam?
“It’s personal,” Fielder says of his fixation. How frustrating that he of all people — the dark prince of pranks — may be Holmes’ latest patsy. Composer Ari Balouzian borrows bits of Bernard Herrmann’s violin score from “Vertigo” while cinematographer David Bolen makes the audience hold its breath by framing an image of Fielder and Holmes like they might kiss.
When the movie’s style gets weird, that’s when Fielder is most in his wheelhouse. Stop reading now if you want to preserve the surprise. Micro-analyzing his encounters with Holmes, he reenacts them with an actor, Amanda Seyfried, whose emotional intensity blows into the film like a gust of fresh air. Seyfried, of course, won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing Holmes in the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout.” The twists to come, however, feel as much like last year’s naughty hit “The Housemaid,” the domestic thriller in which Seyfried played a shady wife with a marriage made of lies.
Evans initially seems to think they’re participating in a project closer to Netflix’s glossy portrait of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. The couple doesn’t know much about humor, pop culture or Fielder himself. Fumbling to figure out what makes him tick, Evans attempts to neg the provocateur as someone who lacks the passion to think differently. (Evans may also be the person who used Holmes’ social media account to write a flattering post calling JD Vance “Lisan al-Gaib,” revealing he’s entirely missed the point of “Dune.”)
But thinking differently is Fielder’s awkward superpower. Sooner or later, all of his projects circle around to his concern that he’s simply wired to be unpleasant. His interactions with Holmes are pure cringe comedy, like when she starts to cry perhaps a bit on cue and he stiffly sputters, “Do you want, like, a tissue?” For the record, he brings her one.
As a viewer, the biggest strike against Holmes is this documentary’s very existence. Whether or not you think she’s guilty of fraud, she is about to be separated from her infant and toddler until they’re in grade school. Who on Earth would genuinely want Fielder, the human equivalent of a skunk, to crash their last moments with their loved ones as he does his darnedest to stink up the place?
Fielder is most comfortable as the film’s villain, shooting himself lurking in the couple’s house like “Halloween’s” Michael Myers. At times, his presence does feel monstrous. In one scene, he needles Evans about whether he thinks his soulmate has ever lied to him while Holmes is on the phone in the next room, tearing up as she asks how often she’ll be able to bathe in prison.
The film doesn’t drill into the technical details of Theranos beyond one dizzying scene where Fielder tries to pin Holmes down on exactly what she meant when she said her machine can run hundreds of different tests. She means it just as I would if I bragged I can benchpress a beer keg — that is, once I strength-train beyond my piddly 5 lb dumbbells.
Instead, it tilts into becoming a caper flick as Seyfried’s commitment to understanding her character’s motivation inspires the actor to invite herself along. The drama they uncover is psychological, as befits an era where Silicon Valley CEOs are closer to cult leaders than engineers, making their cash from being televangelists for their IPOs. And both are attuned to the moments when Evans lets his aggravation slip. One scene is a doozy.
Ultimately, suspicion reigns. “You Can See Everything” is an absorbing study of public presentation and private doubts, a documentary that asks more questions than it answers. I hope Fielder will smile and nod approvingly at me if I say I left the film distrusting him, too, especially Seyfried’s re-staging of a long monologue Holmes delivered in prison where recording devices aren’t allowed. Can we believe that Holmes really did say, “I’m tired of having other people speak for me,” or was that laugh line written by the master manipulator himself? I’m now as paranoid as he is — and what a pleasure.
101 East investigates if power and politics are protecting those behind the 2006 murder of Mongolian woman in Malaysia.
Twenty years ago, two Malaysian special forces policemen brutally murdered Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu, obliterating her body with C4 military explosives.
But the truth behind why they killed her has yet to be determined, leading to suspicions of a political conspiracy to silence her.
101 East travels to Mongolia, Malaysia, France and Australia to investigate allegations of interference in the criminal trial, Altantuya’s suspected links to an allegedly corrupt submarine deal and claims by the policemen that they acted on the orders of convicted former Prime Minister Najib Razak, who vehemently denies any involvement in the murder.
Documentary draws on 24 anonymous Israeli sources accusing military of killing Palestinians in Gaza using AI systems.
Published On 12 Oct 202612 Oct 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for an investigation into the anonymous sources featured in a documentary alleging that Israel’s military killed civilians in Gaza using AI-powered targeting systems.
The award-winning film, NAZA, draws on testimony from 24 unnamed Israeli military whistleblowers accusing the army of using the systems to kill numerous civilians in the besieged territory.
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“I demand that the chief of general staff, the head of the Shin Bet, and the attorney general launch a comprehensive investigation into the participants in the film ‘Naza’ and prosecute them for serious information security violations, criminal libel, and harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests,” Netanyahu said on X on Saturday evening.
“The film presents a false, misleading, and biased narrative that defames the State of Israel and the [Israeli military] internationally, severely damaging Israel’s standing,” he added.
In a statement last month, the Israeli military said it “categorically” rejected the whistleblowers’ allegations, calling some of their assertions “absurd’ and contradictory.
It insisted that the selection and approval of strikes “are made by human personnel only”, in line with the military’s guidelines.
Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has called for legal action against the participants to be considered and ordered an investigation into suspected leaks of classified military information used in the film’s production.
NAZA takes its name from the Israeli military term for civilian casualties expected in air strikes, an abbreviated form of the Hebrew phrase for “collateral damage”.
The film was awarded a special jury prize at the Venice International Film Festival and received a historic 25-minute standing ovation.
It has also triggered a political storm in Israel.
The film’s directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, have been accused of “treason”. Netanyahu and Culture Minister Miki Zohar have threatened to revoke their Israeli citizenship.
Last week, the head of Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, Tzipi Hotovely, awarded the creators of another film, NAZA: The Real Story, certificates of recognition for countering the “blood libels” made in the original NAZA film.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, NAZA: The Real Story features testimony from soldiers refuting the original claims.
In contrast, 43 Israeli rights groups defended the filmmakers of NAZA and denounced the threats being directed at them, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and other Palestinian groups attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking about 240 captive.
Since then, Israel has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, including at least 21,000 children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Using interviews filmed on rooftops at night in Tel Aviv, the documentary “NAZA” uncovers Israel’s brutal methodology of warfare in Gaza since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that took 250 hostages and killed at least 1,200 people. The testimony offered by these insiders is under the cloak of darkness, but the light it shines on the mass killing of Palestinian civilians is so harsh it burns the conscience. (The title refers to the Israel Defense Forces’ use of an acronym for the Hebrew term for collateral damage: nezek agavi.)
Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, half of the quartet (with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal) behind the Oscar-winning “No Other Land,” secured one-on-one interviews with 24 Israeli intelligence personnel and soldiers, digitally altering their faces and voices while their silhouettes are framed by the lit cityscape. Sitting across from interviewer Abraham, they recount their participation in a military campaign that has killed over 73,000 in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and is ongoing. Used as an estimation of casualties — just put a number in front, “20 NAZA”— it suggests a battle calculation that has permitted the detachment of moral consquences.
One participant makes his need for anonymity clear: “Israel will put me in jail.” At the same time, there has been clamor for the exposure of these sources so they can be prosecuted for war crimes. The uproar over “NAZA” has also led the filmmakers to be called traitors in their country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to revoke their citizenship.
It all speaks to the power of a well-timed movie, since much of the reporting in “NAZA” has already been published by the Guardian, a co-producer of the documentary, and corroborated by other news outlets. After its theatrical run, the Guardian will stream “NAZA” for free on its website.
The picture painted from the interview subjects, who occasionally draw sketches of weapons-screen interfaces on notepads, is of a computerized tracking-and-killing apparatus, culled from the surveillance Israel keeps of nearly every phone in Gaza. The system is augmented by AI that isn’t always accurate about a target’s presence yet is implemented with airstrikes. Eavesdropping on children is used to track a targeted father’s arrival home in a program called “Where’s Daddy?” As one person says, “You hack her phone and then kill her.”
What’s chilling about these interviews is how they don’t feel like whistleblowing but rather a fact-finding inquiry with available explainers who betray little affect or remorse, even when the topic of personal doubt arises. When one is asked whether this is genocide, the answer comes back, “Yes.” “NAZA” eschews probing for guilty feelings, though, because the point is to unearth a process of obliteration: how it works and what it looks like as implemented by the willing. “My role is technical,” a subject says.
In between these interviews are glimpses of the occasional Israeli news media snippet and at one point an archival reminder of the circumstances of Tel Aviv’s founding. But most insistently, the interstitial visuals are cinematographer Szor’s night shots of apartment facades in modern Tel Aviv: citizens at rest with their loved ones, working out or eating in front of their televisions. It’s a casual surveilling of placidity just up the coast from the atrocities we hear about. “NAZA” isn’t just tough-to-hear journalism, it’s real filmmaking, the visual juxtapositions getting us to think about who doesn’t get to enjoy a quiet evening at home, especially when remote war-waging starts to look like a goal-oriented office shift with a lunch break — or a video game.
Wherever you fall regarding the continued destruction of Gaza, what the filmmakers of “NAZA” make disturbingly clear is that the simplest machinery to spread dehumanization and death is happening now, easing its users into acceptance and rewriting everything about the moral cost of conflict. It’s stone-cold frightening.
