'Urgent work of cinematic activism': review of 'No Other Land'

Despite significant international acclaim, including winning two awards at the Berlin Film Festival and a London Film Critics Circle award, No Other Land is the only Academy Award-nominated feature film not to have an American distributor.

A film about the historic and ongoing destruction of Palestinian villages by Israeli troops and settlers was clearly a politically risky proposition for distributors but that’s exactly why this collaborative project by two Palestinian filmmakers (Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal) and two Israeli filmmakers (Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor) is an urgent work of cinematic activism.

The film centres on Adra, an activist in the West Bank villages of Masafer Yatta, which the Israeli government has been trying to clear of Palestinian residents for decades. Some of No Other Land’s most powerful moments are found in its use of his family archive of home movies, in which Adra’s father can be seen protesting the same acts of destruction. In the present––the film was shot between 2019 and 2023––the film documents the frequent arrival of tanks and the quotidian demolishing of homes. It is brutal in its human detail, as we see families trying to rescue items of furniture and frightened children watching their homes crushed in front of them. Some of the families move into local caves, others try to rebuild by night, a few make the painful choice to leave their land with nothing.

It is a highly self-reflexive documentary, firstly in its reflection on the identities and experiences of its makers. That it is a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers is, of course, a statement on the need for a shared peace. It implies that such a vision must be based on Israeli recognition of Palestinian rights. Such a collaboration is not easy though, and No Other Land subjects its own makers to tough questions. Much of the filming is done by Szor, who shows Abraham being questioned by the villagers of Masafer Yatta, who are suspicious of these Israelis showing up with a camera. Abraham asserts that he thinks Israel’s actions are a crime. Still, he and Szor can come and go as they please while Adra and the rest of the Palestinian villagers cannot. In such an unequal situation, trust is not easily earned. No Other Land makes visible the tensions of the collaboration, documenting debates and arguments among the filmmaking team about whether to allow the filming.

These questions seep out to include the audience. When we watch a woman struggle to care for her disabled son without medicine or electricity, what are the ethics and responsibilities of our mediated presence? Are we helping by watching her suffering? Since the film’s release, these questions have been intensified by the highly mediatised destruction of Gaza. Masafer Yatta has endured escalating settler violence and the film’s Jewish directors have been accused of anti-Semitism and experienced death threats for criticising the Israeli government. The film is thoughtful about the limitations of cinema and social media for activism. And yet, for the inhabitants of Masafer Yatta, uploading video documentation of home demolitions offers their best chance of connecting to an international community. As faint as that hope is, they still draw on a tenet that has been central to documentary cinema, that filming reality can effect change in the world.

No Other Land has won an Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature Film, and both recognition and condemnation of the film highlight the very real stakes of filmmaking today. My research at King’s focuses on the relationships between film aesthetics and political histories, spanning histories of decolonisation across the Global South, queer and trans cinemas, and the radical imaginaries of horror films. My teaching introduces students to filmmaking traditions that are often new to them––from Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America––and encourages them to grapple with and better understand both challenging global issues and diverse artistic practices.