Adra and Abraham’s ‘No Other Land’ Sparks Global Acclaim

Adra and Abraham’s ‘No Other Land’ Sparks Global Acclaim \ Newslooks \ Washington DC \ Mary Sidiqi \ Evening Edition \ The documentary No Other Land, created by Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra and Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham, has received international acclaim for its raw depiction of life in the West Bank under Israeli occupation. Despite awards and recognition, the film faces significant controversy and lacks U.S. distribution as the political climate intensifies with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Set for an Oscar-qualifying run at New York’s Lincoln Center, the film remains a powerful call for awareness on the lives impacted in Masafer Yatta.

Film No Other Land Reveals Life in Occupied Masafer Yatta: A Look at the Documentary’s Journey

• A Documentary with a Unique Perspective: Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham filmed the documentary No Other Land over five years, highlighting the daily challenges faced by residents in Adra’s West Bank village.
• Accolades and International Recognition: The film has won awards at prestigious festivals in Berlin, Vancouver, and Switzerland, yet remains without a U.S. distributor amid growing political sensitivities.
• Capturing Life Under Occupation: Shot between 2019 and 2023, the film documents the destruction, military pressure, and emotional toll on Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta.
• Tension and Controversy: Following its Berlin Film Festival debut, the film faced backlash, with the filmmakers’ statements at the event drawing criticism from German officials.
• Struggle for Visibility and Distribution: Despite praise, No Other Land has yet to secure distribution in the U.S. or Israel, which the filmmakers believe is due to the current political climate.

Deep Look

For five years, Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra and Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham worked to document the struggles of Adra’s West Bank community in No Other Land, a documentary that captures life under Israeli occupation through the eyes of those living in Masafer Yatta. The film, described as a deeply human portrayal of the daily challenges faced by Palestinian residents, has garnered international praise and awards at film festivals in Berlin, Switzerland, and South Korea. Yet, despite this acclaim, the film faces a challenging journey to reach broader audiences, particularly in the United States.

Set to open this week in France and next week in the United Kingdom, No Other Land has secured international interest, even earning a one-week Oscar-qualifying run at New York’s Lincoln Center following its screening at the New York Film Festival. But the film still lacks a U.S. distributor. This delay, according to Abraham, reflects political concerns in the lead-up to a hotly contested U.S. presidential election.

“Maybe they’re afraid to be defunded if Trump wins,” Abraham suggested in a recent interview. “Basel risked his life for years to film this material,” he added. “That requires courage. Can we not have one distributor with the courage, OK, to take a certain risk, but to distribute such an acclaimed and such an important documentary?”

No Other Land tells a compelling story of endurance and resilience. The film focuses on the West Bank area of Masafer Yatta, a mountainous region south of Hebron, where communities of Arab Bedouins have long lived, maintaining traditional ways of life through agriculture and animal herding. This area has been the subject of a long-standing Israeli military effort to relocate Palestinian residents to clear land for military training, which Israeli authorities say was used by Bedouin herders only seasonally, without permanent structures.

Adra’s father was an activist, and from a young age, Adra joined community protests against these relocations, witnessing and documenting how Israeli military pressures affected his village. The film shows him capturing demolitions of homes and schools, and violent encounters with settlers, bringing viewers into the heart of the struggles faced by the residents.

“When we began filming, we didn’t know how much worse things could get,” Adra said, reflecting on the film’s timeline, which ends in October 2023 as escalating violence unfolds in Gaza and the West Bank. As Israel’s response to a major Hamas attack on Oct. 7 intensified in Gaza, civilian casualties mounted. According to Palestinian health officials, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed, with over half reportedly women and children, while raids in the West Bank and increased settler violence have added to the crisis, raising the death toll by hundreds.

This worsening landscape adds a new level of poignancy to No Other Land, which reflects on the stark realities of families enduring poverty, displacement, and loss under military law. “There’s a big dissonance in participating in festivals when nothing is festive and everything is becoming worse,” said Abraham, a Jewish journalist from southern Israel.

Adra, Abraham, and their team — including co-directors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor — have had to balance their film’s success with ongoing hardships in Masafer Yatta. “We made this movie to not lose Masafer Yatta, to not lose our homes,” Adra explained. Despite the film’s acclaim, he finds it difficult to reconcile its impact on the festival circuit with the worsening conditions in his community. “The movie is succeeding and has publicity, but it’s not helping what’s happening on the ground,” he added.

After its debut at the Berlin Film Festival, No Other Land quickly attracted controversy. During an award acceptance speech, Adra drew attention to what he described as Israel’s actions in Gaza, while Abraham used the opportunity to call for an end to Israel’s occupation. These statements sparked backlash in Germany, where many officials felt the filmmakers failed to recognize Israeli victims or mention Hamas. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, labeled the speeches as “blatant antisemitic discourse.”

Abraham, however, defended their position. As a descendant of Holocaust victims, he says that calling critiques of Israel’s policies antisemitic risks diluting the term’s meaning. “We called for equality between Palestinians and Israelis,” he explained. “To me, this is the most important message that there can be.”

The film also focuses on Adra and Abraham’s friendship, which they see as emblematic of a potential coexistence. Together, they document military and settler activities, capturing tense moments that unfold as they work. In one poignant scene, Palestinian co-director Ballal challenges Abraham, asking, “It could be your brother or friend who destroyed my home.” The exchange highlights the dual realities: Abraham lives under civilian law, while Adra and Ballal navigate daily life under military law, sometimes facing uncertainty even in basic activities like travel.

Now, amid worsening conflict in Gaza and the ongoing fight to preserve communities like Masafer Yatta, the filmmakers feel the pressure to make their voices heard, particularly in the U.S. where the film has yet to secure a distributor. This issue isn’t limited to No Other Land; other politically sensitive films, like The Apprentice (a drama on Trump) and Union (a documentary on Amazon labor struggles), also struggled to find U.S. distributors.

New York magazine critic Bilge Ebiri notes that U.S. distributors once embraced such stories, adding that “Are these companies holding back out of budgetary reasons, out of cowardice, out of political disagreement?” is an open question. The filmmakers of No Other Land believe the film’s message — a call for mutual security and equality between Israelis and Palestinians — deserves a place in U.S. theaters.

“Silencing our voices — the voices of a Palestinian resisting occupation and an Israeli who believes in equality — blocks dialogue,” said Abraham. “Why are these voices being kept out of mainstream cinema in the U.S.?”

Adra and Abraham hope that their film can still reach global audiences and stand as a lasting record of the current crisis. “We wanted to show the world that the status quo is very harmful and must change,” Adra stated. “That was before Oct. 7. We don’t want another tragedy like Oct. 7 to happen. We’re asking global leaders to act and stop being complicit with occupation policies.”

As the conflict continues, the message of No Other Land resonates with urgency, calling for a re-examination of the international response to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “What’s happening is very sad and tragic,” Adra said. “I never imagined something like this could happen in my lifetime, and it’s painful to see the world letting it continue.”

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