March 14 through 16: "No Other Land" Documents Palestinian/Israeli Friendship and Resistance
Despite multiple awards, the film has not found a US distributor. It deserves to be seen and discussed.
[NOTE: this is an update to an earlier review. Originally aired March 7 through 9, the film broke box office records for the Webster Film Series, hence the new dates indicated in the last paragraph.]
Directors Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor's debut documentary "No Other Land" offers the perfect antidote to the tragic, ongoing Palestinian-Israeli hostilities. For in this film four activists collaborate to share their perspectives on the intractable conflicts they have personally endured. Their acts of resistance, as they describe them, focus on the displacement of Palestinian inhabitants in the Masafer Yatta region of the Southern West Bank, a community of 20 small villages.
Upon multiple occasions, risking his life in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian Basel Adra videotapes Israeli soldiers bulldozing and destroying Palestinian inhabitants' homes with the aim to transform the area into a military firing range. Soon, visiting Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra forge a friendship. As they've said in interviews, they recognize that, though the same age, they live under two different legal systems; for example, Yuval's car has a yellow license plate while Basel's is green, meaning Yuval has unhindered access to the area while Basel cannot leave the West Bank. They explicitly make clear that shared values unite them and assert they certainly should enjoy the same rights.
In voiceover narration, the film begins with Basel (now 28 years old) talking about his oldest memory at five years of age and his father's first arrest. Basel then segues to the first protest he remembers when seven, realizing his father and grandfather were committed activists. Home movie footage follows, then new video shot the summers 2019 through 2022 documenting villages bulldozed, families retreating to caves. More homes, schools, and playgrounds will soon be demolished. In one tragic altercation, trying to hold on to his tools, Harun Abu Aram is shot and paralyzed from the shoulders down. Throughout subsequent events, futile Palestinian protests occur amidst increasingly dangerous confrontations with Israeli soldiers.
Over four years, cinematographer/co-director Rachel Szor documents seizure of Basel's home computers, cameras, and personal items. For background, interspersed throughout the film, selections from 20 years of Adra's family's and neighbors' archival video provide historical context of Palestinian villages going back generations. Footage captured between 2019 and 2023 (often shot handheld and on the run and, therefore, very shaky) concluded before the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack and massacre. In the four directors' statement, they write in part, "Reality around us is becoming scarier, more violent, more oppressive, every day - and we are very weak in front of it. We can only shout out something radically different, this film - which at its core, is a proposal for an alternate way Israelis and Palestinians can live in this land - not as oppressor and oppressed, but in full equality." May their hopes become reality.
I first saw the film at this year's New York Film Festival with a very receptive audience. Thanks to a weeklong Oscar theatrical run at New York's Lincoln Center, it qualified for Academy Award nominations and won this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. And yet, "No Other Land" has not found a U.S. distributor even as it has won over 50 major international awards, has screened at numerous, prestigious international film festivals, and signed with distributors in 24 other countries. It deserves to be seen and discussed. In English, Arabic, and Hebrew with English subtitles, "No Other Land" has additional screenings at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium Saturday, March 15, and Sunday, March 16, at 3:30 p.m. each day. For more information, visit the film series website.