Film Review: No Other Land

No Other Land won the best documentary at this year’s Oscars. This follows many other awards globally, including at the Berlin film festival where it won the Berlinale documentary award.

The film is hard to watch even if we know the story it is telling us. From its opening scenes it graphically records the relentless cruelty and violence of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) towards the shepherds and farmers of Masafer Yatta, an area in the southern West Bank.

It was filmed between 2019 and 2023 – through the collaboration of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers: Basel Adra, a Palestinian who began filming the Israeli occupation of his village in Masafer Yatta when he was fifteen, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist and Arabic–Hebrew translator, Szor Rachel, an Israeli cinematographer, editor and director and Hamden Ballal, a Palestinian photographer, filmmaker and farmer from Susya who has worked as a researcher for several anti-occupation human rights groups.

In the 1980s the Israeli government declared most of Masafer Yatta an Israeli military training and firing zone. Since then, Palestinians residents have frequently faced forced eviction, demolition, and forcible transfer. The area has been subject to court hearings where both the residents and the Israeli authorities filed petitions to the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ).

In May 2022, the HCJ ruled that there were no legal barriers to the planned expulsion of Palestinian residents from Masafer Yatta to make way for military training, effectively placing them at imminent risk of forced evictions, arbitrary displacement, and forcible transfer.

The declaration of a military zone is a tactic of ethnic cleansing. Approximately 20 per cent of the West Bank has been designated as “Firing Zones”, affecting over 5000 Palestinian from 38 communities. (See the fact sheet produced by OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)

Throughout the film the IDF bulldoze and demolish the homes of Masafer Yatta residents – preparing for ethnic cleansing in plain sight as families are continuously displaced. We take in the fear that the military provokes when a demolition is imminent; the attacks and shootings when there is the slightest sign of protest or resistance.  And there is resistance – from the community – bravery, anger, sometimes despair. The men of the village attempt to rebuild homes under the cover of night. The residents face violence and continual disruption of their daily lives by the IDF but also from settlers, protected by the military.

One of Adra’s cousins is shot when opposing a power generator. Paralysed, he is taken to the cave where his family now have to live, with his elderly mother desperate about the conditions he is living in. At the end of the film in a footnote we learn he has died.

Perhaps the film is more harrowing because we get to know its main characters. Through films of Adra’s childhood we learn about his activist father who has been  imprisoned many times. He is taken to prison during the filming of No Other Land. We see Adra’s connection to his community and to the land. And we understand the friendship between Abraham and Adra – the closeness, but also its inevitable tensions.

Despite its subject, No Other Land is not a film that just documents the immediate horrors of occupation. The scenes between Adra and Abraham are in contrast to the often chaotic coverage of the demolitions and attacks. We listen to them describing their very different lives – Adra tells his friend not to expect change any time soon. Abraham, however committed, has not experienced the generations of pain and despair of Masafer Yatta’s community.

The film hasn’t been without critics – unsurprisingly it’s been trashed by Israel’s vocal supporters but also by some on the left and by some Palestinians: the most notable criticism came from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) an arm of the BDS movement). In their official statement, they stated that the film violates its guidelines on anti-normalization: the Israeli side of any joint project like this must affirm their opposition to occupation and apartheid and their support for the Palestinian right of return, and that the joint activity itself must constitute a form of co-resistance against the Israeli regime.

However, many Palestinian activists, academics and writers have said that the PACBI’s opinion is unjust. Activists in Masafer Yatta have criticised the PACBI: statement:

Tariq Hathaleen, an activist from the village of Umm Al-Khair, believes that the overwhelming majority of residents in the area still stand behind this decision to welcome Israeli activists into co-resistance, especially now when the community feels more vulnerable than ever. He also thinks the BDS movement’s denunciation has a class element and is part of a struggle over narrative ownership.

The symbolism of the film’s partnership between Israeli Jews and Palestinians isn’t about suggesting some utopian future of harmony between two sides. We understand that the vast majority of Israeli Jews support the occupation even if a growing number oppose Netanyahu and his clear objective to continue with genocide. The two Israeli directors’ objective in making the film was to get a wide as possible audience for the brutal reality of life for Palestinians in this part of the West Bank. The opposition to the film seems not to be shared by the majority of Palestinians – in Palestine and in the diaspora.

There are other criticisms – some pro-Palestinian campaigners are unhappy that it is limited to just one area in the West Bank. Or that it doesn’t directly refer to the wider historical context of the Nakba – though the meaning is clear enough when we learn about Adra’s father and his resistance – there are cycles of displacement and violence going back through generations.

Even if the role of Israel and the occupation is not directly discussed, the Israeli State is always there – its menace behind every demolition, every attack, every shooting. The IDF is its proxy, the contrast between Jerusalem and Masafer Yatta and between the lives of the two main character is symbolic as well as descriptive.

There is also debate about whether the film would have had the same recognition through its many rewards and festival successes, culminating in the Oscar – if it had been a solely Palestinian project? We can only speculate but it is probably true that being a joint project aided its success globally.

But this is a film with its origins in the personal experiences of Adra, whose family has been documenting the Israeli occupation for years, and Abraham, who, as an Israeli journalist began documenting the events in the area and wanted a wider platform to expose what is happening there. Their friendship is critical to the film.

No Other Land doesn’t flinch from exposing the brutality of the occupation and the occupiers. Despite its awards it has failed to get distribution in the US because the Israeli lobby doesn’t want it seen – the distributors have shown their cowardice in the face of the censorship of the Biden and the Trump administrations of any criticism of Israel.

The filming was finished in October 2023. A note tells us that the expulsion is ongoing. And we know it has intensified under the cover of the assault on Gaza. This brilliant film is more relevant each day, as the Israeli government, backed by the US and the West, makes its intentions crystal clear – the outrage happening daily in the West Bank is nothing to do with military training or security and everything to do with preparing for a new Nakba.

Footnote

On 24 March Hamdan Ballal, one of the four directors of the film was surrounded and attacked by a group of about 15 armed settlers in Susya in the Masafer Yatta. He was taken away, seriously injured, by IDF soldiers and imprisoned. He was released on 25 March after a global backlash – though there was silence from the US and UK governments.

No Other Land is available to watch for free on Channel 4