This Oscar-nominated documentary about demolitions in the West Bank has no US distributor — but is still coming to theaters
“No Other Land,” made by Israelis and Palestinians, has mobilized the film world post-Oct. 7
“No Other Land” (Antipode Films)
(JTA) — For months the international film community has rallied behind a documentary about the Israeli military’s destruction of a Palestinian village in the West Bank that has failed to land a U.S. distributor despite widespread acclaim.
Now, “No Other Land” has another feather in its cap. On Thursday the movie, co-directed by an Israeli-Palestinian filmmaking collective, received an Oscar nomination for best documentary — a rare feat for an undistributed film.
In a thank-you message following the nomination, the film’s Israeli co-director, Yuval Abraham, wrote on X in Hebrew, “It was created thanks to the community of Masafer Yatta and countless human rights activists who documented the ongoing expulsion over the course of 20 years.”
Asked for a reaction to the Oscar nomination, representatives for the filmmakers said they didn’t have one yet as “things have been quite intense in the West Bank the last 48 hours.”
Two of the film’s four nominated directors are Palestinians who live in the West Bank, where this week Israel has launched raids on the city of Jenin only days after reaching a ceasefire in Gaza, in an operation seeking the perpetrators of a recent terror attack. The region has also seen a dramatic rise in violent Israeli settler activity in the many months since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Even as it remains in cinematic purgatory, “No Other Land” is still making its way to theaters nationwide. A representative for the film’s sales company, Cinetic Media, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency they were partnering with mTucker Media, which negotiates with movie theaters for independent film releases, to bring the documentary to more than 20 cities in the coming weeks.
After opening at New York’s Film Forum next week, the movie will roll out to other markets including Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston and Washington, D.C. on Feb. 7. It is also available to stream for free for residents of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Cinetic has declined multiple JTA requests to interview any of the film’s credited directors, Israelis Abraham and Rachel Szor and Palestinians Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. But elsewhere, the filmmakers have been outspoken about their struggle to secure a stateside release.
“I read it as something that’s completely political,” Abraham recently told Variety about its lack of distribution. “The film is very, very critical of Israeli policies. As an Israeli I think that’s a really good thing, because we need to be critical of these policies so they can change. But I think the conversation in the United States appears to be far less nuanced — there is much less space for this kind of criticism, even when it comes in the form of a film.”
“Americans have a responsibility, I believe,” Palestinian co-director Basel Adra said in the same interview. “And I hope that they watch it and move in the right direction and take any action they can in order to help us change.”
A personal narrative, the film focuses on Adra, a resident of the Masafer Yatta village collective, and Abraham, an Israeli journalist, in the aftermath of a controversial 2022 Israeli Supreme Court order ruling Adra’s home the property of the Israeli military. The title derives from a quote given by a village resident, as she contemplates the potential loss of her home: “We have no other land.”
The film chronicles various IDF demolitions, Palestinian resistance to evacuation orders and violent attacks on the village by Israeli settlers. The two also examine their own friendship and individual futures, which they conclude are built on unequal ground because Abraham is granted more rights as an Israeli citizen.
Shot almost entirely before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the film focuses exclusively on the West Bank. A brief coda shows rising Israeli settler attacks on the villages since Oct. 7, and the film’s directors have also used their festival run to speak out against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end,” Abraham said during his acceptance speech at the February 2024 Berlin Film Festival, where the movie premiered and won a documentary prize. Adra said Israel was enacting a “massacre” of Palestinians and denounced German arms sales to Israel. Israeli TV said Abraham’s speech was antisemitic, which Abraham said lead to death threats. At the film’s release in Germany this fall, the city of Berlin accused the film of “exhibiting antisemitic content,” a charge the festival’s own director objected to.
American film critics, including several Jewish ones, have fiercely championed the movie. David Ehrlich, the Jewish lead film critic for Indiewire, named it the second-best film of the year and partnered with Adra to launch a fundraiser for the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
“I thought it was more than a film,” Jewish film critic J. Hoberman, who named ”No Other Land” the best movie of the year in Artforum magazine, told JTA. “I was really glad to have a movie that was so outspoken about what I perceive as a terrible injustice.”
Industry insiders have speculated that the film hasn’t found a distributor because American companies don’t want to deal with the headache of backing a film that criticizes Israel after Oct. 7.
“No company feels like they can take the risk of the baggage that that film might bring, whether or not they agree with the perspective in it,” Eric Kohn, a Jewish creative head at new-media production studio EDGLRD and former film critic, recently told JTA. (“Israelism,” another documentary critical of Israel, similarly found grassroots success for months before being acquired by newly formed Palestinian distributor Watermelon Films.)
The movie shares themes with “5 Broken Cameras,” an acclaimed 2011 documentary about a Palestinian West Bank resident caught in the middle of an Israeli settlement construction. The earlier film was also co-directed by Israelis and Palestinians, and was also nominated for an Oscar. Unlike “No Other Land,” however, “5 Broken Cameras” was screened widely by an American distributor and eventually aired nationally on PBS.
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