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PORTSIDE CULTURE

PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI FILMMAKERS TEAM UP TO CREATE ‘NO OTHER
LAND’  
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Justin Chang
January 31, 2025
NPR
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_ No Other Land, an award-winning documentary about the dispossession
of Palestinians in the West Bank, still hasn’t found a distributor
in the US. _

Scene from "No Other Land", On Screen NYC

 

_No Other Land_ isn't just the most powerful nonfiction film I saw in
2024; it also had one of the year's more remarkable off-screen
narratives. The movie brings us into Masafer Yatta, a community of
Palestinian villages in the Israeli-occupied southern West Bank, which
is being bulldozed by the Israeli military to make room for a tank
training ground.

Since it premiered early last year, the film has won numerous prizes
at international festivals and from American critics' groups;
recently, it received an Oscar nomination
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best documentary feature. For all its acclaim, though, _No Other
Land _has yet to find an official U.S. distributor. That's both
surprising and not surprising, given the industry's anxiety when it
comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the directness with
which this movie confronts it.

Even so, _No Other Land_ will be playing select theatres across the
country over the next month at least, and it deserves to be widely
seen. It began shooting in 2019 and wrapped in October 2023, and so it
feels in some ways like a pre-Oct. 7
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capsule of the West Bank.

It was directed by a team consisting of two Palestinian filmmakers,
Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, and two Israeli filmmakers, Yuval
Abraham and Rachel Szor. During the production, Basel, an activist and
journalist who grew up in Masafer Yatta, became good friends with
Yuval, a Jerusalem-based journalist who was covering the demolitions.
Their relationship provides the movie's dramatic core.

Part of the unexpected charm of _No Other Land_ is that it sometimes
plays like a verité buddy movie, as Basel and Yuval navigate the
initial awkwardness of their cross-cultural friendship. Yuval pitches
in with efforts to rebuild homes, taking some good-natured ribbing for
not being the handiest of helpers.

When Yuval complains that his articles about the conflict aren't
getting enough clicks, Basel gently calls him out: "You are
enthusiastic, like you want to end the occupation in 10 days," he
says. "This has been going on for decades." Nonetheless, Basel knows
the importance of the role that journalism can play, and his and
Yuval's combined efforts do succeed in drawing international media
attention.When Yuval complains that his articles about the conflict
aren't getting enough clicks, Basel gently calls him out: "You are
enthusiastic, like you want to end the occupation in 10 days," he
says. "This has been going on for decades." Nonetheless, Basel knows
the importance of the role that journalism can play, and his and
Yuval's combined efforts do succeed in drawing international media
attention. 

One of the major figures in _No Other Land_ is Basel's father,
Nasser, who has been arrested numerous times for protesting — an
activist legacy that he has now passed on to his son. Nonetheless,
Basel knows the importance of the role that journalism can play, and
his and Yuval's combined efforts do succeed in drawing international
media attention.Basel says he feels ambivalent about inheriting that
legacy and the exhaustion of having to spend your whole life fighting
to protect your home.

The footage shot by Basel and his colleagues nonetheless shows just
how important that fight is. We see Palestinian families frantically
evacuating mere minutes before their homes are destroyed, then moving
their possessions into nearby caves. We see farm animals wandering in
confusion from their demolished coops and pens, and children playing
amid the ruins, as children in war zones often do.

Sometimes Basel is in front of the camera, marching in a protest or,
at one point, screaming as he's dragged on the ground by IDF soldiers.
Often he's behind the camera; he keeps filming even amid the chaos,
including one gut-wrenching moment when a Palestinian man is shot at
point-blank range by an Israeli settler.

At one point, Basel says, "This is a story about power." And we see
how that power plays out in different ways. The filmmakers include
footage from years earlier, when then-U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair
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the region; he spent just a few minutes touring Masafer Yatta. Shortly
thereafter, Israel called off demolitions in the area.

There's also a power differential, of course, between Basel and Yuval.
When _No Other Land_ won two awards last February at the Berlin
International Film Festival, the filmmakers took the stage together,
and Yuval said, in his acceptance speech: "In two days we will go back
to a land where we are not equal" — and he added that this
inequality has to end. How it could end is not a question that _No
Other Land_ can answer. But as an example of Palestinian-Israeli
collaboration in action, Basel and Yuval and the vital movie they've
made give us reason to hope.

* Film
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* Film Review
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* documentary
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* No Other Land
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* Palestine
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* Israel
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* Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal
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* Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor
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