No Other Film As Deserving Of An Oscar
Editor's Note: The following is a review of a film that stands at the intersection of journalism and represents an achievement in the face of threats to freedom of expression. On March 2, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
When the credits rolled at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, I could feel a heaviness in the air. The auditorium was chillingly silent after an afternoon screening of “No Other Land.”
A small group of activists in the back of the auditorium briefly pierced the silence with their message about boycott, divestment, and sanctions, or BDS, against the Israeli government. But the typical low hum of chatter that one normally hears after most screenings was absent. Everyone slowly put on their winter coats, picked up their belongings, and slowly exited as they processed the stunning images they had just seen.
Few films in recent memory are as vital as “No Other Land.” The documentary feature from first-time filmmakers Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, and Basel Adra, a Palestinian journalist, is a frontrunner for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of 2024. It is the highest-grossing documentary out of all of the documentaries nominated for an Oscar. It has won over 60 awards from critics associations and film festivals around the world. And yet, most of the attention that it has received in recent months stems from the film not having a distributor in the United States.
Abraham and Adra, along with co-directors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, have had to turn to a traveling road show distribution model — booking the film at colleges, universities, arthouses, or private theatres — to reach U.S. audiences. In the meantime, a severe escalation in the West Bank by the Israeli military and settlers has made overcoming film industry censorship so Americans may access this acclaimed documentary even more urgent.
“No Other Land” is set in Masafer Yatta, which Adra describes as “a collection of small villages at the southern tip of the occupied West Bank.” Adra has lived in at-Tuwani for all his life. But the Israeli government refuses to recognize these villages. The Israeli military plans to evict as at least 1,000 Palestinians from Masafer Yatta to further establish a “training zone” that will prevent Palestinians from expanding their villages.
From the summer of 2019 to October 2023, the film shows how Israeli soldiers besiege and demolished homes. Adra says, “I started filming when we started to end.” He often shouts at Israeli soldiers as they raid his village, “I’m filming you!” Adra wants the soldiers to know that the world will see what they have done.
Abraham, a journalist who lives in Jerusalem, drives regularly to Masafer Yatta to cover the home demolitions and spend time with Adra. The camaraderie between Abraham and Adra yields several bittersweet, sincere, and sometimes even amusing exchanges. Both grapple with grief, despair, fatigue, and powerlessness. Israeli policies of apartheid that privilege Abraham and make it harder for Adra to exist only sharpen those feelings.
Often Abraham is by Adra’s side as residents weather demolitions and settler attacks. Palestinians in the village recognize Abraham’s solidarity. However, because Abraham is Israeli, in a few scenes he bears the brunt of their understandable rage and resentment toward the Israeli military occupation.
For a first-time feature, the filmmakers display a firm grasp of how to structure their story. Abraham said in an interview for Indiewire’s podcast that they did not want to lose the sense of repetition, yet they needed to “pick the scenes” that would “match the sense of escalation.” Each scene had to convey that the violence was not random but rather Israeli government policy.
The collective met in Adra’s home to edit the movie. Any time that the Israeli military or settlers invaded the community, they had to hide the footage. When they weren’t dealing with attacks, they could screen it for people in the village. The feedback from residents helped them appropriately balance the film’s threads, including a poignant arc that involves a mother and her paralyzed son Harun who struggle to survive in a cave.
Many of the demolitions and settler attacks that appear in the film were captured by Adra, who often is running for his life while trying to record military raids. Abraham and Ballal also filmed the violence, and the filmmakers used Canon HD cameras because it was “easy to run with them after bulldozers.” Szor filmed Abraham and Adra and their conversations through “more of a classic fly-on-the-wall style.” Finally, archival footage from the past 20 years was incorporated as well.
Given the wealth of material, it is impressive that they produced a 90-minute film that sparingly and sensibly offers viewers a cinematic presentation of life in Masafer Yatta.
An attitude that journalism is not enough to stop this injustice surfaces throughout “No Other Land.” On Indiewire’s podcast, Abraham shared, “You feel this desensitization. Nobody is listening, and that was the urge for us to try and explore a new medium, to sort of through a film help people see things that they were unable to see.”
Adra posts videos of attacks to Instagram that garner thousands upon thousands of views. Abraham writes Hebrew stories about Palestinians to share what they are enduring with Israeli readers. Yet despite clear evidence of human rights abuses, there is global indifference. (“As if it happened but also didn’t happen,” says Abraham.)
During a scene set in summer 2019, Abraham and Adra express their determination to make the film so that the U.S. government is forced to pressure the Israeli government to halt the illegal settlements. It is an admirable goal for the film, however, by winter 2020, Adra believes Abraham is is too “enthusiastic,” like he wants the “occupation to end in 10 days.” Abraham will be disappointed and needs more patience, according to Adra.
Documenting the Israeli military is incredibly risky for Adra, as it is for any Palestinian who engages in journalism. One sequence in the film shows soldiers going door-to-door in search of Adra while he hides. In fact, in July 2023, Adra refused to unlock his phone and show a soldier footage of a settler attack on the village of Mufagara. He was detained and abused by Israeli soldiers.
Adra recalled for +972 Magazine that the Israeli soldiers tied a blindfold around his head and put him in a jeep. Soldiers transferred him into another vehicle and brought him to a military base. One soldier shouted, “You’re an asshole, you’re a dog, shut up.” Another soldier asked if he worked for Al Jazeera. He was “put in a chair in the sun.” After a few hours, they loaded him back into a vehicle and dropped him off at the Mufagara village entrance.
Production on “No Other Land” ended right before the Israeli government launched its bombardment of Gaza that flattened the Palestinian territory and killed at least 60,000. Initially, the filmmakers were not certain that the public would have much interest in their story. The violence in Gaza was far more brutal than what the West Bank had endured thus far.
Much of the world has seen countless videos and photos of massacres carried out by the Israeli military. If anything, the war on Gaza primed an audience to view the film and immediately understand that violence against Palestinians isn’t simply retaliation for terrorist attacks. Plus, violence by Palestinians living under military occupation does not excuse such inhumane acts by Israel and a fervent United States.
On February 5, Adra posted from the West Bank, “I’m surrounded now by armed and masked settlers, who are leading a terror attack on Masafer Yatta as I write.”
“Dozens of settlers arrived at my friend Naser’s house in Susya, throwing stones at his home, smashing his vehicle, and slashing tires with knives. They then moved to his brother’s house, where they punctured the water tank. More settler vehicles arrived and attacked another house with stones while the family inside screamed for help.”
“Neither I nor anyone else could get close — they were armed,” Adra added. “We risked our life to film. Some settlers eventually returned to the outpost before the eyes of the police and soldiers.”
The Israeli military deployed tanks in the Palestinian territory on February 23, which it had not done in 20 years. Days before, Adra bleakly expressed how he was feeling ahead of the Oscars.
“This is the worst period we have ever lived through. It’s hard to say anything encouraging because the situation is so terrible,” said Adra. “I just saw what [U.S. President Donald] Trump did. He canceled the sanctions that had been imposed on some settlers [by President Joe Biden’s administration]. Clearly, he has no compunctions about officially handing the West Bank over to Israel. Neither international law nor moral justice will prevent Israel and the United States from expelling us.”
After seeing scenes of the Israeli military bulldoze a school or puncture a water pipe, it is impossible to not feel a weight — the responsibility to act so that Adra and others no longer have to live this nightmare.
Like many who have seen the film, I had to drive a distance to attend a screening. I am certain that there are numerous U.S. citizens appalled by what their government has done in their name, who are eager to support this documentary by watching it in a theatre. Yet as they search for a screening, not only are they disappointed to find none but also that no streaming service has it available.
Buzz for the film is at its highest, and industry executives have ensured that the fewest number of Americans view it while the film’s director pleads for help.
The courage to make a film like “No Other Land” in spite of pervasive hopelessness and disregard for Palestinian lives is ultimately why this film is so important — and why it is shameful that no film distribution company stepped forward to ensure this documentary was booked by American theatre chains ahead of the Oscars.
Here's the filmmakers behind "No Other Land" accepting the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature: