NO OTHER LAND

The Oscar-nominated documentary harrowingly captures the daily horror of Israeli bulldozers destroying Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank and asks you why we keep looking away.

No Other Land opens with a 2019 Israeli Supreme Court verdict declaring parts of the West Bank a military zone. Hours later tanks and bulldozers move towards the village of journalist Basel Adra, who for the next four years will record the subsequent, gradual destruction of not just buildings, but a resilient yet shell-shocked community on his video camera.

There is nothing necessarily new or revelatory in the way Adra and a fellow, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham record the daily stress of a people bullied into submission by an arrogant aggressor, but they hit a home run when it comes to making the incessant horror tangible.

Though the documentary only is about 90 minutes long, it succeeds marvellously in making you instantly care for the families impacted by Israel’s actions. It does so by mixing the daily recordings of tumbling walls and destroyed roofs with archive footage of Adra’s youth that highlights how this endless intimidation and harassment of the Palestinians has long become routine practice in Israel.

What sets No Other Land apart from other, similar docs is the warm friendship between Adra and Abraham, shown in interspersed off-the-cuff conversations while smoking or driving the car. They exhibit a glimmer of idealistic hope for a future of coexistence and mutual understanding that is nowhere to be seen in the most harrowing parts of the movie.

While the film does briefly include the fallout of the October 7, 2023 attacks at the very end, that topical coda isn’t even needed to hammer home the persistent marginalisation of Palestinians by the Israeli state and rabid colonists. Which begs the tough question: why has the world looked away for so long and is a solution further off than ever?

release: 2024

director: Bader Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor

starring: Bader Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal