‘No Other Land’: Searing Oscar-Nominated Documentary Chronicles Palestinian Life Under Brutal Occupation

Alci Rengifo

A documentary like “No Other Land” defines everything that is vital about the power of film to be a chronicle. Devastating and full of justified anger, it places the viewer front and center in the reality of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Palestinian directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal worked with Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and cinematographer Rachel Szor, also Israeli, to present in wrenching human detail what amounts clearly to an apartheid state and colonial project. Now the documentary arrives in a curious state that says much about our modern society. It is the most decorated documentary of 2024, now nominated for an Academy Award, and has struggled to find distribution. Dismiss your political sensibilities. This is a document that must be seen.

The focus is Basel Adra and his efforts from 2019 through 2023 to document via video Israel’s efforts to demolish his home village of Masafer Yatta. It is located in the West Bank, which along with East Jerusalem, constitutes the Palestinian territories Israel has been illegally occupying and settling since 1967. Adra’s footage presents the brutal cycle in all its clarity. Israeli forces move in, claim their land is needed for a “military training ground,” and proceed to demolish homes, destroy wells and expel the population. Many families resist and move into nearby caves, vowing to return at night to rebuild in secret. Yuval Abraham appears as that rare Israeli Jew who feels genuine compassion for his Arab neighbors, outraged at what is being done in his name. With Basel, Yuval confronts the Israeli soldiers who arrive with deadened stares to push out the Palestinians, and witness acts of terrible violence, both from troops and settlers who behave like leftovers from the Jim Crow South.

“No Other Land” arrives at a time when the Israel-Palestine conflict has dominated headlines like never before in the wake of Israel’s devastating war on that other Palestinian territory, the besieged enclave of Gaza, following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants into Israel. For many Americans the details of the conflict are too archaic to understand or they see it through glasses tinted by our conditioned biases. What the filmmakers present leaves little room for ignorance. A day in the life of the film’s subjects can suddenly be broken by the arrival of troops ready to displace them, using excuses clearly meant to cover up the nature of what amounts to colonialism. It doesn’t matter that these are families who can trace their roots to the land for centuries, for the Israelis they are a mere nuisance. A cave suddenly becomes a refuge. What is astounding is the mixture of despair and strength on display from the Palestinians. 

At the heart of the chronicle is the friendship between its filmmakers. It is vital that someone like Yuval can cross artificial barriers to be in solidarity with Basel, yet it is far from easy. Through them we see the apartheid system at work. The West Bank is essentially under a military regime. Palestinians have no civil rights here. Roads are reserved for Israeli settlers and Palestinians are not allowed to drive on them. Yuval is free to leave when he wishes back to Israel, while Basel, like the rest of his people, is not allowed to leave the West Bank without Israeli authorization. The “only democracy in the Middle East” functions like a dictatorship in this land. Eventually, Palestinians wonder how Yuval can even remain a friend when one of his friends or relatives could very well turn out to be a soldier coming to drive them out. 

Yet, without solidarity there will be nothing but an abyss. The violence Basel’s community faces is pure fascist terror. A local man is paralyzed when Israeli troops shoot him for protesting the taking away of a power generator. Racist settlers, their faces masked, descend on the village to sow fear, fully backed by soldiers. One chilling thug mocks Yuval for writing his articles, another films him with his phone, warning that his face will be made public. It takes courage to face such monstrosities, especially when all you have is a moral will. Yuval has to be honest with his friend and say that few read his reporting, because nobody wants to face what is happening. The great Israeli journalist Gideon Levy also appears at one point, interviewing the residents of Masafer Yatta. He too has been condemned as a traitor by the right-wing of his country, no doubt because, like all truth tellers, he shakes their cowardice. 

“No Other Land” is a powerful human chronicle in how it portrays the violence of power and those who have to resist or fade away. There is a tragic melancholy to Basel, who went to college and studied law, but has no options in an occupied home. One is reminded of the plight of the Native Americans or all Indigenous peoples who have faced this same kind of fate. There is immense bravery in this documentary as well, from the Palestinian boys willing to tell a soldier to leave their home or the mothers somehow making a home for their children in the interior of a cave. What viewers should keep in mind is that the Palestinian issue is not disconnected at all from the United States. We fund and arm the Israeli machine bulldozing these lives. The entire West is complicit. There is a moment where footage shows former British Prime Minister Tony Blair visiting a corner of the village that was then left alone by the occupation. Early on, Basel speaks with the heartbreaking naivety of believing that his footage could spark enough outrage in the U.S. to intervene.

The haunting, closing moments of “No Other Land” inform us that filming ended on the fateful month of October 2023. The war on Gaza would begin and the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu would take advantage to expand the colonial violence in the West Bank while carrying out its genocidal assault on Gaza. How will it end? History is unpredictable. What is clear and unnerving is how a documentary like this puts to shame our slogans of “Never Again” or how we insist on reckoning with the sins of the past, while ignoring the ones taking place right now. The people of Masafer Yatta were left to resist alone but at least their story is preserved in a documentary like this. It is a testament to the worst of humanity and also the glimmering flickers of genuine solidarity. Basel only has his camera while others will gravitate towards the armed struggle. What right do we have to criticize them? There is the fleeting comfort of knowing the filmmakers’ work is being acknowledged, which is testament to the power of what they are sharing. In the future someone will surely discover this work and wonder why the terror in its frames was allowed to go on. 

“No Other Land” releases Jan. 31 in New York City and Feb. 7 in Los Angeles.