Content Warning for descriptions, images, and reporting on violent scenes of oppression, police brutality, and genocide.
There are special movies, and then there are films that you’ll never forget. No Other Land, an on-the-ground account of a Palestinian West Bank village suffering under Israeli apartheid in 2019, is one such film. It has been nominated for Best Documentary at the Oscars and played at the Berlin Film Festival, TIFF, and NYFF. Due to a climate of cowardice, it still has no theatrical or streaming distribution partner in the U.S.. So, this review will dive deeper than it normally would, just in case you never get the chance to see it.
“This is a story about power that I grew up hearing.”
The film follows Basel, a 20-something Palestinian filmmaker helping an Israeli journalist named Yuval cover the theft of the West Bank after a 2019 Israeli Supreme Court decision.
Basel Adra in documentary NO OTHER LAND. Photo courtesy of Antipode Films.
The scenes of raw oppression, destruction, resistance, and hopelessness in No Other Land are the most powerful cinematic moments put to screen in 2024. But equally as powerful are the frank discussions between the two leads. The honesty of brothers. We see Yuval argue with his editor that the stories are worth the time and money to cover. You can read some of that harrowing coverage in the links provided later in this review.
For readers who are not aware, while the actions of the IDF (Israeli Defensive Forces) in this film are illustrative of the actions they have taken in Gaza, the West Bank is today a separate state of Palestinian land. It is governed through the Israeli-recognized Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. Palestine was a unified, occupied colony state under British control after World War I, but after the Arab Revolt failed to overthrow colonization leading into World War II, the Jewish Holocaust was used as political cover to split Palestine into two small states controlled and bifurcated by the largely white European Israeli state. This was the 1948 ethnic cleansing event known as the Nakba, and ever since, the land has been segregated along racial and religious grounds.
Basel Adra in documentary NO OTHER LAND. Photo courtesy of Antipode Films.
Though Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been linked at various points in their history, they are currently separate, though the oppression of their citizens by Israel remains the same. The Palestinian Authority controls The West Bank and typically represents Palestine internationally. They operate similarly to the figurehead regimes that the U.S. and France put in place in South Vietnam last century, using authoritarian tactics on their citizens to stay in power, but unable to resist the foreign governments that allow them to do so. And so the people of the West Bank are not only left to their own devices to navigate an Indigenous-colonizer relationship like ours in the U.S., but are actively sabotaged by their leadership in doing so. It is in this environment that No Other Land takes place.
Like Vietnam before it, the reality of Palestine and its history is often unfamiliar to American readers and voters due to oversimplification by and political influences on media and education. But unlike the people of Vietnam, the people of Palestine have digital cameras to show us what is happening, making this film a democratic wonder of the digital age.
Just as our government has pushed or allowed “unsanctioned” settlers to push Indigenous tribes off of their land for centuries (still in practice today with the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline), Israel chose to seize No Other Land star Basel’s hometown for a “military practice field.” Basel’s town sued to keep their land and, decades later, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled against the Palestinians. Leaked Israeli documents have since proved that this was an excuse. In both the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli land developers have eyes on Palestinian land and plenty of money to encourage the IDF to seize it. And like the Indigenous Americans of any time in U.S. history, Black Americans before the Civil Rights Act, and Black South Africans before the fall of Apartheid in the 1990s, the residents of the West Bank are under a legal segregation that prevents them from fighting back and keeping their land, either through manned resistance or fair and equitable legal recourse. And so the army bulldozes their buildings.
A scene in documentary NO OTHER LAND. Photo courtesy of Antipode Films.
Comparing the history of the West Bank and our own is important for two reasons. First, human morality is not bound by lines drawn on a map. Second, because the film demands it. It takes place over many years, but it begins in 2020, when a man named Harun Abu Aram tries to rebuild his bulldozed home at night. His family has been forced to move into a cave, and he is understandably desperate. The IDF comes in the day to steal his generator. When he resists, they shoot him. We see them shoot him. His spine is destroyed at the neck, leaving him paralyzed. He died last year.
This became a boiling point for The West Bank. The Palestinian cause and the American Civil Rights Movements have been tied together in solidarity for decades, writing on each other’s behalf and exchanging ideas. The attack on Harum came less than a year after the death of George Floyd in the U.S., and the comparisons between Harum and George Floyd are drawn by the filmmakers and activists for our benefit and attention. While we and our neighbors were still occasionally marching with black banners and white letters, they were marching with banners of the same, spelling out “Palestinian Lives Matter.” And just like in the U.S., it not only amounted to no widespread policy results but created a stronger backlash from those who benefit from the system of abuse. And few felt the backlash as hard as Basel himself.
“Who do you think you’re filming you son of a bitch” – A soldier yells as he chases Basel
Basel was raised by a community leader. He studied law, then gave it up, barred from practicing, barred from winning. What good is the law if the law is wrong? Instead, he remembered how the school his father built, doomed to demolition, was saved by a visit by then-UK-Prime-Minister Tony Blair. Or rather, the news cameras that followed him. But when the Tony Blairs stopped coming, so did the cameras. So, Basel brought his own.
Basel has learned the power of film and throughout No Other Land’s 95 minutes, we see him and those around him hunted and punished for it. When they cannot take him, they take his father. He films them and they flee. They tear his camera out of his hands. We fear for his life. He grabs for his lens; now he flees. The immortal shot of his pounding sneakers. A dozen armed settlers in a dozen white hoods take matters into their own hands while authorities stand by. He lives. “I hope, I hope, I hope.” The settlers fill the wells with concrete. They cut the water lines with chainsaws. He presses record. He presses upload. He holds the camera tight. They bring their own cameras, and they point them at him.
No Other Land is a significant film in its literary structure as much as in its image making. It has a powerful rhythm of mirrored contrasts. The life of a free Israeli and a segregated Palestinian is laid bare in the back and forth. One particular sequence about who is allowed to own certain license plates rings in my head every time I sit behind my own wheel. The film is punctuated by conversations between Basel and Yuval, and they are incredible. And just like Basels’s camera is mirrored, so are his discussions.
“So you’re a human rights Israeli.”
A man named Hamdan always questions Yuval’s presence as an Israeli. He asks if his friends destroyed his house, if his family is complicit. Despite Yuval’s own personal risk and defiance of his government, Hamdan demands more of him, saying that none of his words mean anything as long as the people of the West Bank remain oppressed. He blames him for his people’s actions, just as we are now told to blame Hamdan and all Palestinians for the actions of October 7th. Central to the film is the question: who is complicit? Who is responsible for the arrests of Basel’s father, or for putting Harun in that cave?
The answer is plain. Those who commit the violent act are responsible. No one else can move your arm, can furrow your brow in hate, and compel you to pull a trigger. Debates about guilt, retribution, and responsibility can rage, but never, never is it the right thing to do to kill a child, or thousands of children, or to oppress an entire ethnic group in the name of “security.” Nor is it the right thing to do to turn a blind eye.
No Other Land is the fulfillment of the promise of the digital camera. This is what true democratization of art looks like. It’s not AI-based plagiarism for those who are scared of picking up a pencil or taking a photo. It is giving anyone, everyone, these people in trouble, the ability to express their sorrow, their indignation, and their circumstances under their own power. The gift of self-respect and an agency over your own narrative even as the agency of your fate is given to those who hate you. This is why Basel is so powerful a protagonist and a hero for the Palestinian people. A common refrain among education advocates is “How many Picassos are there who’ve never been given a chance?” His expression as an artist, a Picasso who was never supposed to be given a chance, is an affront to the apartheid.
A scene in documentary NO OTHER LAND. Photo courtesy of Antipode Films.
More than that, as someone who has worked many rooms full of elites of the highest order, know that the powerful despise being seen. “Why would you watch that” is a question often asked of cinephiles, but it’s really another question dressed up with glasses and a Groucho mustache: “Why would someone make that?” If this was a film about Palestinians by outsiders, the purpose of the film would be to make the oppressed feel seen. When we feel seen by strangers, it can make us feel good, like we live in community. It can also make us feel vulnerable or on display. Throughout the 2023-2024 military campaign against the people of Gaza, there have been many posts from Palestinians thanking American citizens for liking, reposting, and sharing posts about what’s been happening over there. There have also been angry posts by the distraught and the doomed, asking us to do more than scroll, because if we really cared, why would we let our money kill them?
In one of the most emotionally complicated sequences of the film, of any film this decade, a white documentary crew, one of many to pass through the village, come to see the paralyzed Harun in his cave, upsetting his mother. “All the journalists that came here. They all saw Harun and nothing changed for him. There he is, still in a dirty cave.” This film is a fulfillment of the promise of digitally democratized film, but it also highlights the limit of art in changing the world.
“How do they expect us to forget this place?”
“They made us strangers in our land…”
“It took 22 years for the court to decide.”
If one point of Basel’s power is the self-respect his art gives his people, another tine in his trident is the fear that it strikes in the hearts of his oppressors. When strangers see us, instead of brotherhood or vulnerability, we can be struck with fear. Sight compresses the gap between the distant and the present. Camera lenses, even more so. What we push off and hide about ourselves from ourselves suddenly moves closer when external examination zooms in.
This is why the powerful do not want or expect to be looked in the eye. Because if you can look them in the eye, you can make them see themselves as they really are — on the same level ground as you with the same obligations to right and wrong, unadjusted by wealth or circumstance. As Basel’s tale goes on, a strange thing occurs. When he first begins to film the IDF soldiers during acts of violence, it can cause them to flee or to pause. Later, they lash out. But eventually, mirror versions of Basel begin to appear. Israeli citizens who appear in his face shouting “I’m filming you, I’m filming you Base’,” just as he shouts at the IDF. But he does not buckle, and he does not lash out, because he does not have an unexamined heart. In their quest to protect themselves from his power, they misunderstand it, and so they cannot replicate it, only the shape of it. Such is the source of all vapid art and corporatization of complicity. Such is the source of most evil, even genocide, as a nation seeks a shortcut to ownership and heritage, but can only create the empty, evil shape of a claim.
“Nobody is coming.”
“Get used to failing. You’re a loser.”
“Basel I honestly don’t know how I would be if I lived like you.”
Beauty makes its way into the film despite its circumstances. The land itself. Basel’s mother telling him to put a coat on. Yuval saying to himself “I have to write more.” A child pulled along in a plastic shipping container with wheels added to it, giggling. But all this joy is tinged with despair. This film was completed before October 7th, 2023, and just as Israel’s government used the attack as a pretext for its planned genocide of Gaza and attacks on Lebanon, it has also used it to increase the seizure of land in the West Bank. And thanks to people like Basel, the world has been watching. What could once be hidden can now only be redefined or ignored. And Hollywood is trying both.
Even this past September, Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda won a News and Documentary Emmy for “It’s Basan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” on AJ+ on YouTube, despite efforts by Pro-Israel factions of Hollywood trying to get the film disqualified. Now, President Trump is threatening to deport any pro-Palestine college exchange students who have been caught demonstrating. Freedom of press and freedom of speech are slipping down the slope.
“Because if we keep silent, they’ll keep doing it.”
Netflix has been “failing” to renew licensing agreements with Palestinian films already in their library. September 5 (2024) and The Brutalist (2024) have been played as political pawns this awards season, regardless of each work’s stance on Zionism. And both No Other Land and From Ground Zero (2024), the official Palestinian submission for the Foreign Language Oscar which was ejected from Cannes on “political” grounds, have no American distribution. Even distributors like Janus Films with politically controversial films like No Bears (2023) and I am Cuba (1964) in its library, or Neon with the rebellious Iranian film The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), have turned a blind eye. Mubi, herald of international cinema, has the laudable courage to stream The People’s Joker (2024) but, maybe out of fear of taking a loss on their documentary Oscar play Dahomey (2024), have not taken up the cause either. Meanwhile, the film has been screening around the country to meet its Oscar screening requirements and attract a buyer. It secured a nomination, but at this point, a win might be its only way to drawing the attention to the West Bank that it seeks.
L-R: Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham in documentary NO OTHER LAND. Photo courtesy of Antipode Films.
Yet, there is a human cost of such attention. The day the film made it off the short-list and onto the official notations for Best Documentary, the IDF raided Basel’s village again. With the Ceasefire supposedly in effect in Gaza, Israeli settlers and the Israeli government alike has ramped up their persecution in The West Bank. When there’s no attention, they run rampant. When The West Bank gets attention, they retaliate against those who raised their voice. But if the wish of the oppressor is silence, it has few greater allies than Hollywood’s tight lips and tighter purse strings.
No Other Land is my pick for the best film of 2024. It is not only an incredible film about racism, oppression, and resistance, but will one day be seen as one of the great films about film. Now you’ve read about it; hopefully, one day you get to see it.
Screening at Film Forum in NYC beginning January 31st, 2025.
Screening at Laemmle Royal and Laemmle Town Center 5 and select theaters nationwide February 7th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Antipode Films No Other Land webpage.
Final Score: 5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
Beautiful piece of writing. Thank you