Filmed in Palestine between 2019 and 2023, No Other Land is a documentary film performing its calling. An urgent and irresistible reminder as to why we choose to understand the world, and others, through cinema.
Witnessing is the most effective defense people have against occupation… The footage is out there, and it’s rarely been assembled into a more concise, powerful, and damning array than it is here. Now it only has to be seen.
Screened as part of 2024
No Other Land 2024
Produced by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, this is a film poised to meet a world changed by events that have unfolded since it wrapped production in October 2023. No Other Land documents a Palestinian village and its residents as they struggle against forced displacement. The West Bank’s Masafer Yatta faces mass evictions at hands of Israeli authorities. Yet this is as much a story of its own co-directors’ asymmetrical relationship, as it is an account of events in Masafer Yatta. The result is a masterful exploration of 21st century apartheid and colonisation.
At the centre of the story is Masafer Yatta activist and one of the film’s co-director, Basel Adra. Beside him is Israeli journalist and another co-director, Yuval Abraham. Abraham lands inside the reality Adra has inhabited for decades to report on what his own government is doing to Masafer Yatta. Abraham grows invested in the village’s struggles against home demolitions. Still, he enjoys freedom of movement and an alternative economic reality half an hour away inside Israel. The reality of these inequalities is not lost on Adra, who names them openly in exchanges between the duo. In refusing to manufacture a harmonious scene of Palestinian and Israeli friendship, the film demonstrates a respect for its subjects, and ultimately, audience. The relational honesty lends to a granular illustration of the vast human consequences of Israeli occupation.
A combination of hand-held footage and intimate scenes of ordinary Palestinian life among extraordinary instability are woven together at an artful pace. Not one of the 95 minutes feels wasted. Given the work that Adra and Abraham do during years of filming to record and share the truth, this is a film that asks, both out-loud and implicitly: if people knew, would things change? No Other Land is both an invitation and a wero, a generous offering that demands to be seen and discussed. — Nadia Abu-Shanab