When the Oscar nominations were announced, I was surprised to find one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2024 nominated for Best Documentary. Why was I surprised? Because the film had yet to secure a film distribution deal in the United States. No Other Land is about the IDF’s forced evictions and demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February of 2024 but had only played at a handful of U.S. festivals; although the majority of filming was completed before October 2023, the events of October 7 irrevocably changed the sociopolitical environment of the film’s release. Fortunately, at the time of this writing, a freelance film distribution company has stepped up to put it in limited theaters around the country.
The film chronicles years of an unfolding IDF-led eviction of a collection of Palestinian villages known as Masafer Yatta, located on the southern tip of the West Bank territory, right on the edge of the Negev Desert. The court-ordered actions were taken in order to build a military training base. An Israeli-Palestinian collective took it upon themselves to document the events, predominantly through the eyes of two of its members—Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham. They shot the film in cinema verité style, avoiding “talking head” interviews altogether. Save for a few media clips and some voiceover work, No Other Land feels like a witness statement signed by the camera, calling to mind documentaries such as Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA or Peter Nicks’s The Waiting Room.
While capturing the forced evictions is the central part of the film, the two men’s tentative but warm friendship deepens the human side.
Adra, a Palestinian, grew up in Masafer Yatta watching his father protest Israeli incursions in the West Bank and often seeing him getting arrested. He has an online presence and social media following that he uses to bring awareness to his family’s plight through first-person documenting. He says he’s a known entity to Israeli intelligence and spends many nights in fear that he is about to be arrested. Abraham is an Israeli Jewish citizen from Be’er Sheva whose family came to Israel in 1900. While studying Arabic in university, Abraham’s political views changed and he turned away from an opportunity to work in Israeli intelligence and became a journalist.
While capturing the forced evictions in all of their upsetting, unsettling detail is the central part of the film, the two men’s tentative but warm, awkward but sweet friendship deepens the human side. As we spend time with them, the stakes start to feel higher. As viewers we can easily grow immune to witnessing human tragedy, and we may find it easier to relate to the experience of making a friend from a different background. This provides another way into the material, perhaps around our defenses. They are honest about their varying privileges (Abraham can cross the border into Masafer Yatta as he pleases, but Adra cannot); Abraham is not there to play the role of savior, but he uses his access, platform and privilege to make his voice heard, while Adra and his family are caught up in small daily acts of survival.
In a disarming manner, we get to peek in and catch the two in their downtime. They sit around, smoke hookah, talk about starting families, and share their hopes and realistic expectations for the future of Israel and Palestine. Adra is downright exhausted but also bored, sick of being on his phone all day: He says, “I am stressed because I have nothing to do.” Cycling between acute adrenaline where your life hangs in the balance and then doing a whole lot of waiting is the same mental process that soldiers in war go through. In the modern era where so much activism and outreach revolves around social media, being an activist means spending almost the entire day on your phone. No wonder Adra feels so burnt out by the time night falls. Meanwhile, he gently ribs Abraham for his eagerness—or impatience—to solve the problem, as if the whole situation will somehow resolve happily in ten days. Adra tells his friend to be patient and to get used to losing.
Much of the film’s impact is delivered through an array of startling juxtaposed images. A bunch of blue balloons confiscated by a man in a Hi-Vis safety jacket. An elementary school classroom with a line of IDF commandos gathering outside the window. A children’s playground with a demolition notice taped to the gate. Him taking a moment to rest while bulldozers roam in the background. The cognitive dissonance of a soldier telling a villager that the underground water well they have been using all of their life is illegal.
As cinema verité, No Other Land can’t help but end up being about the act of filming itself—the last bastion of expression when other avenues have dried up. “I started filming when we started to end,” says Adra in the opening sequence of the film, referring to the point when the Masafer Yatta evictions began. Perhaps one of the most distressing scenes comes towards the tail end, when a group of vigilantes from nearby Israeli settlements show up to bash in windows and threaten the villagers, all in the presence and with the tacit approval of the IDF.
When Adra’s father is arrested again, he has to take a step back from the action to be a provider for his family, taking over the gas station his father runs. Then it’s up to Abraham to take the reins of the film project, encountering taunts and hard questioning from fellow Jewish Israelis in the process. Will he continue the work? Adra realizes that he is now the same age that his father was in the videos that began the film, while noting that their situation has not improved. If anything, things seem to have gotten worse as the dream of peaceful coexistence feels further and further away.