No Other Land

Deemed by many critics one of the essential films of 2024, a multiple festival award winner and a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, No Other Land is a reminder that mass expulsion is by no means a new reality for Palestinians — indeed for Basel Adra, an activist from Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, this has been his life. Faced with the systematic demolition of homes and schools, carried out to make room for an Israeli military training ground, residents confront a painful choice: either move away and relinquish their land or endure and try to rebuild. With the help of Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, Adra documents the evictions and organizes protests against them, even as the pair’s unequal personal situations hang over their work together.

Filmed vérité-style by a four-person Palestinian–Israeli collective over a period of five years, No Other Land is an eye-opening look at the realities of Israeli occupation. Winner of two documentary awards at this year’s Berlinale, the film alternates between scenes of harrowing immediacy and heartbreaking intimacy. It is at once a testament to the resilience of those who stay and fight, as well as a sobering meditation on the power—and the limits—of filmmaking.

If anything can be described as essential viewing, it’s this stark and unflinching account of life on the ground in a contested region of the West Bank.

Wendy Ide, The Observer

With exceptional lucidity, No Other Land reminds us of the human stakes of Israel’s resettlement of the West Bank, and that fighting for justice starts from the ground up.

Pat Brown, Slant magazine