Now in the It Came Right on Time Department, the new documentary No Other Land shows up in American theaters just a couple of weeks after a certain world leader announced his apparent plans to build vacation resorts in Gaza — and the Palestinians who used to live there will just have to find someplace else to live. Almost an immediate response to you-know-who’s ass-backwards, possibly-a-war-crime declaration, Land shows audiences how getting kicked to the curb is something Palestinians have had to endure since way before Orange Julius came to power.
“I started filming when we started to end,” says Basel Adra, one of the four filmmakers who directed No Other Land, via voice-over. A longtime videographer, Adra, along with his Palestinian-Israeli crew, spent several summers filming and recording as the Israeli military bulldozed the people and homes of Masafer Yatta, his Palestinian community in the West Bank where Israeli forces built a military training ground.
As the offspring of activist parents — along with fighting for his people, Adra’s dad is also the community’s lone gas-station proprietor — Adra finds documenting these atrocities both necessary and depressing. But no matter how mentally obliterating it gets (authorities apprehend his old man at one point), he knows what he has to do — and he knows things won’t change overnight. When Israeli investigative journalist/co-director Yuval Abraham complains that his latest dispatch hasn’t gotten enough views online, a chuckling Adra reminds him that he’s in for a long battle. “This has been going on for decades,” Adra tells him.
It’s a vicious cycle that Adra and his team regularly endure in Land. By day, they film men, women and children being harassed and even shot at by the military, as their homes and schools are demolished right in front of them. At night, Adra and Abraham spend quiet moments smoking hookah and strategizing, trying to wind down even when there’s a possibility that people with guns will come by for a surprise visit.
There are no talking-head interviews in Land, as Adra, Abraham and co-editors/directors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor aim for a cinema-verité, you-are-there tone that makes the film feel more like a neo-realistic drama. During these quiet moments, Adra and Abraham exhibit a silent intimacy, hinting that the pair may be fighting for more than just Adra’s homeland. (Although Adra and Abraham’s relationship appears platonic, I did wonder if Adra let the cat out the bag when he asked Abraham when guys like them will stop protesting and get married.)
It’s damn near miraculous that Land, which wrapped filming right when the Israel-Hamas conflict horrifically escalated in October 2023, is getting some theatrical time around these parts. Although it was picked up for release in 24 countries, Land couldn’t find an American distributor. (It appears that even our ”daring” indie distributors — they know who they are — don’t wanna deal with the scrutiny and headaches they could possibly face by releasing a film about what’s going on over there.)
Nevertheless, the film had an Oscar-qualifying run at New York City’s Lincoln Center in the fall, which definitely worked in its favor. Along with getting a limited rollout in theaters (including Nashville’s very own Belcourt), it will also be a Best Documentary Feature nominee at next month’s Academy Awards.
Even if it doesn’t win, No Other Land is an essential, less-bloody-but-still-fucked-up record of an Arab culture literally being erased. If there’s one thing these people do not need, it’s a Western despot looking to scoop up some international property.
