In February, Oberlin students had the opportunity to attend the sold-out premiere of Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque through an Art History department field trip. Despite being incredibly well-received by several renowned international film festivals, the documentary was not screened widely in the U.S. In the weeks prior to the Oscars ceremony, the Cinematheque was the only theater in the Midwest screening the documentary.
The film was created by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers who had been working on the project since 2019. It is centered around the experiences of Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta, a community of villages in the hills of the occupied West Bank. The documentary follows Basel Adra, his family, and his community throughout the several evictions and violent threats of displacement they face at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces. At the beginning of the film, Adra befriends Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who assists him in documenting the continuous violence.
Adra descends from a family of activists that have been resisting forced displacement from their land in Masafer Yatta for decades. Nasser, Adra’s father, has been arrested multiple times throughout his life for protesting the violent actions of the occupying forces. He and the Masafer Yatta community have a history of inviting Israeli and international activists to their village to join them in protesting the occupation.
Shot by Adra and others in his community, many scenes are filmed shakily with phone cameras as they quickly run from one village to the next, bearing witness to the violent displacement of families from their ancestral homes or fleeing from armed settlers hurling rocks and slurs at them. In one scene, the Israeli Occupation Forces taped leaflets on an area of houses and a playground, marking them for demolition to make space for a military training ground. The film later reveals that the declaration of the site as an IOF training ground was a guise to clear Palestinians off their land to build Israeli settlements. Under international law, these settlements are considered illegal. When Basel’s home is among several demolished, his family and many others are displaced once again and forced to move into makeshift homes in the hill caverns of Masafer Yatta.
When the IOF comes to one already-destroyed village to seize an electric generator, Harun Abu Aram tries to prevent them from taking it, only to be shot in the neck by an Israeli soldier. His stay in the hospital is cut short when the IOF bans Palestinians from driving on the roads around Masafer Yatta, and his family has to quickly bring him back to their makeshift home in the hill cavern. Paralyzed from the neck down, the audience watches as journalists enter the cave to photograph his motionless body, before he turns his head away and yells at them to leave. The soldier was ultimately never found guilty through an Israeli investigation into the shooting that was closed after Harun passed away two years later.
At one point, Basel sits down with Yuval and expresses his uncertainties of what the future holds for him under occupation in the West Bank. Despite being a lawyer, he is only able to find work in construction in Israel. When his father is arrested by the IOF, he is forced to take over the family’s gas station business to make ends meet. He discusses his hesitancy to keep up his father’s legacy of activism when the threat of violence and arrest constantly looms. After their conversation, Basel becomes visibly distant as Yuval returns to his standing home in a city that Basel is legally forbidden from entering. With seemingly no end to the apartheid regime in sight, complete with the IOF’s recurrent village demolitions compounded by rampant violent settler attacks, the film concludes. As the credits rolled, 300 viewers solemnly exited the sold-out theater with no sense of resolve to the ongoing suffering they just witnessed.
Despite having no U.S. distribution, No Other Land was named Best Documentary at the 97th Academy Awards, being the first Palestinian film to accomplish this historic feat. In his acceptance speech, Basel spoke about his recently-born daughter and his hopes that she will never have to endure the settler violence and forcible displacement that he and his community continue to suffer. He concluded his acceptance speech with a call to end the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Yuval spoke about the importance of projects such as No Other Land in drawing attention to the violent and unequal treatment of Palestinians under military occupation. He also brought attention to the role of U.S. foreign policy in blocking paths to peace.
No Other Land was an incredibly powerful account of the ongoing struggle and steadfastness of Palestinians against Israeli occupying forces in the West Bank. It is not typical of Israel–Palestine collectivist projects to showcase such candidness in what is needed from Israeli settlers to end the violent occupation of Palestinian land. Half-truths are a staple of the genre, showing enough to evoke empathy in the viewer but not enough to provoke action. No Other Land diverges from this in a powerful and effective way by acknowledging that it is not enough for settlers to “pull back the curtain” and reveal what oppression of Palestinians is required to uphold Israeli society. There must be calls to dismantle the apartheid state from within. This includes an end to the conflation of Palestinian resistance to terrorism and the requirement of an Israeli partner for the voices of Palestinians to be heard. As Mohammed el-Kurd says in his book Perfect Victims, “Our testimonies have heft, whether published on Israeli websites or not. Our tragedies are real, regardless of whether they are broadcast. Above all, the Palestinian struggle for liberation is heroic — no qualifiers needed.”
