No Other Land (2024)
dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Rated: N/A
image: ©2024 Yabayay Media and Antipode Films
Each and every time I sit down to write about a movie – and I’m assuming this is true for any film critic who gives a damn about their craft – one of my main objectives is to find an angle or a take that is in some way novel. I want to bring something new to the conversation about whatever movie it is that I’ve decided to dedicate a review to. For the documentary No Other Land, I’ve decided to go the opposite route. For this review, I’m going to be about as original as your average 8-year-old.
What we see in No Other Land, which is about the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta, and, more broadly, is about the violence perpetrated against all Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military, government, and settlers, isn’t fair. This injustice is not fair. This violence is not fair. This treatment of an entire community of human beings as second-class citizens is not fair.
I’m sure every dad in America simultaneously stood up, not knowing exactly why, and said the words, “Life ain’t fair, son,” as I wrote that last paragraph. I’m here to raise a hand of protest by declaring that I don’t give a good goddamn. Life might not be fair; it is incumbent upon us, as rational animals possessed of the power of reason, to make it as fair as possible for every member of our species.
The feature film directorial debut from it’s four co-directors, No Other Land is the collaboration of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor. Ballal and Szor work behind the scenes – Szor served as the film’s cinematographer; all four shot footage and contributed to the editing process – while Adra and Abraham feature prominently in front of the camera.
Shot over a period of roughly four years, between 2019 and 2023, their film tells the story of the citizens of Masafer Yatta, of which Palestinian Adra is a life-long member. The Israeli military, with the blessing of the Israeli judicial system, have unilaterally declared a large swath of Masafer Yatta as an Israeli military training and firing zone. We see numerous instances of the military forcibly displacing from the land the people whose families have lived there for decades (if not centuries) by bulldozing their homes and committing violence against them in an attempt to force them to move into densely packed cities. It’s not fair.
Throughout the film’s economical 95 minutes, we learn about Adra’s life, family, and connection to the land that he and his people are being viciously attacked for occupying. Journalist Basel Adra feels a strong sense of duty to stand up in the face of this injustice. He learned it from watching his father, Nasser, who is also an activist for Palestinian rights. Basel speaks to us in voiceover about growing up with his dad as a role model in seeking justice. Nasser is held in an Israeli jail for much of the events of No Other Land, having been arrested for his activism. It’s not fair.
This father-son relationship made me think about my own father while I was watching No Other Land. Not long after the horrific and inexcusable violence committed against Israeli citizens at the hands of Hamas on October 7, 2023, in retaliation for their own subjugation by the Israeli government, I called my dad, like I do every year, to wish him a happy Veterans Day.
The conversation eventually turned to the terrible attack, and he told me that whoever stands against Israel stands against God, not so subtly intimating that whatever violence Palestinians as a whole receive as a result of Hamas’ actions, they have it coming. My dad knows that I’m an atheist, so you’d think he’d also know his appeal to a Magic Invisible Sky Wizard to justify unimaginable suffering would land with me like a turd falling in my drink (apologies to Bill Hicks).
While watching the Israeli military bulldoze a primary school for young children in No Other Land, I thought about what would happen if a group of people came down from Oklahoma to my parents’ house in Texas and declared that it was now theirs, and that they would be tearing down my parents’ home of three+ decades with a bulldozer. My dad, a veteran of the US Navy, would likely put it to them like any good sailor would: he’d tell them to go fuck themselves. He’d say that because what these hypothetical Oklahomans would be threatening to do wouldn’t be fair.
It's like Kendrick Lamar said in his 2024 track “reincarnated”, “Every individual is only a version of you.” When each of us begins to understand that, something like heaven might dawn upon the Earth.
It’s doubtful that Basel’s film would have enjoyed the international fame it has found – No Other Land held its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival and received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature (and, as of this writing, is favored to win) – without the help of his friend and colleague Yuval Abraham. An Israeli investigative journalist, film director and Arabic–Hebrew translator, Abraham is appalled at how his country treats Palestinians and has dedicated his career to raising awareness about the apartheid conditions of his fellow humans.
Still from No Other Land, courtesy of Antipode Films
If there’s one criticism that I can offer about their profoundly moving documentary, it’s that I would have liked to know more about how these men met and became friends and allies in their fight against injustice. What is made abundantly clear is how differently Basel and Yuval must move through the world because of their circumstances.
In occupied Palestine, even the roads are bigoted. Basel describes to us how cars with yellow Israeli license plates can drive on any road, but cars with green Palestinian plates are blocked from access to many of these same roads, all of which are controlled by Israel. In fact, Basel can only move between the West Bank and Israel when Yuval gives him a ride in his yellow-plated car. The United States eradicated this form of apartheid (at least officially) in the 1960s. South Africa overturned theirs in the 1990s. Why is this segregation still allowed in Israel? It’s not fair.
The overwhelming emotion I felt while screening No Other Land – besides a deep sense of grief – is one any 8-year-old in the throes of a temper tantrum can relate to: I was fucking pissed off. I was fucking pissed off at seeing a mother forced to witness her own son being shot for the crime of protesting an unjust system. I was fucking pissed off at seeing the callousness of a bulldozer used to obliterate the only homes these people have ever known. It’s not fair.
I was fucking pissed off that the justification used for this naked theft of land and rampant settler-colonialism are words in a book written thousands of years ago by bronze-age primitives. (People deserve respect; ideas do not. Everyone can personally believe in whatever religious nonsense they want, but using it as a reason to displace and abuse others is inexcusable.) To quote, once again, my inner 8-year-old, it’s not fair. Until we reckon with that very simple observation, our species will continue to be nothing more than monkeys fighting over pieces of the ground.
Why it got 5 stars:
- No Other Land is a film that will be looked at decades and (if the species survives that long) centuries from now as an invaluable document that chronicles the barbarity of 21st-century human beings.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The film finds, in its connecting Basel Adra to his father’s activism work, a beautiful, poetic way to evoke the Palestinian struggle for human rights in the past.
- It genuinely doesn’t seem that difficult to me to imagine strangers coming to one’s home to destroy it and everything in it, and being convinced that, since one wouldn’t want that done to them, it shouldn’t be done to anyone. Yet here we are.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- I saw this via a marketing screener link at home with Rae and our good friend Tim, a confirmed documentary obsessive. No Other Land is currently available exclusively in select theaters.
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The FFC’s political soapbox
Donald Trump is preparing to hand over the country of Ukraine to authoritarian madman Vladimir Putin. I fear what will happen to the brave people of Ukraine when Putin takes control. To put it like the disgusting Trump might, he used the most beautiful, perfect, really, bit of Orwellian doublespeak to accuse Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a dictator, when that’s precisely what Putin is. Putin’s unlawful, murderous invasion of Ukraine is a travesty, but this administration loves to work with the real dictators. This is not normal. None of this is normal.