No Other Land | 2024
A still from NO OTHER LAND. Courtesy of Antipode Films.
There will be others who will write far more eloquently about this film than I will, but I think it might be one of the most essential films of our time. No Other Land is a searing and devastatingly urgent portrait of the plight of Palestinians through the eyes of Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who form an unlikely friendship covering and protesting the Israeli destruction of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.
Directors Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal capture the conflict on the ground in harrowing verite style as Israeli forces wreak havoc on Palestinian homes and schools to make way for a military training ground, claiming that the settlement that was there first was encroaching on a non-existent training ground that wasn't there. Through systematic destruction and degradation, they exert their will on an increasingly helpless, and increasingly helpless people.
Taking place before the events of October 7th that kicked Israel's historical genocide of the Palestinian people into high gear through their actions in Gaza, No Other Land takes an on-the-ground look at just how we got here. There's only so far you can push people before they fight back, and witnessing such casual cruelty is a sober reminder of the true human toll of the Palestinian genocide. It's a fearless work, a howl of rage in the face of injustice, but what makes it so memorable is its ability to find calm in the storm - as people hold onto hope in the face of almost unfathomable circumstances.
Here, the Israeli occupation is both a Kafka-esque nightmare of intentionally obfuscating and contradictory laws, and an all-out war waged through both violence and intimidation, psychological efforts designed to keep a people demoralized and constantly reminded of their lower status. This is a stunning film and an incredibly necessary one, a deeply human and horrifying work that the world needs to see; but as of this writing, the film has no US distributor or release date. There is a particularly heartbreaking moment in the film when a Palestinian woman whispers "no one is coming." As the genocide being committed by Israel rages on with international compliance and American complicity, films like this are even more essential to telling this story. This is what genocide looks like, and No Other Land refuses to let us look away.
