[KVIFF Review] This is a Story of Power: "No Other Land"
"This is our land, that is why we suffer for it."
Mostly filmed between the Summer of 2019 and early October 2023, No Other Land traces the slow destruction of the Palestinian villages of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. These are villages that have been marked on maps for over a century, yet the people who have lived in them are now told they do not have the legal right to exist.
"We have no other land. This is our land, that is why we suffer for it," one of the besieged villagers sighs as she attempts to rebuild her family home inside a cave after her house has been ruthlessly demolished. The authorities claim these demolitions and expulsions are being done to make way for Army training grounds. After years of this endless destruction, leaked documents reveal what the villagers already knew: they are really part of a plan to curtail village expansion and force those who live off the land into cramped city apartments where their every movements will be even more surveilled and controlled.
Co-director Basel Adra's first memory is from when he was 5 years old. He was awakened by the light of his father's late-night arrest. At seven years old he attended his first protest. Slowly, Basel realized he comes from a family of activists. His mother helped devise a plan to build the elementary school where he was educated. Her idea was to have the women and children build during the day so soldiers would relatively leave them alone and then have the men secretly build at night. Later we will see footage of Tony Blair visiting the site of this school, impressed that it was built via nonviolent protest. Because there was footage of Blair's seven minute visit to the school, the Israeli Army stopped harassing the people who built it and the building was no longer marked for demolition. "This is a story of power," Basel says.
In the two decades since that incident, Palestinian activists lost their appeals in the Israeli courts and the expulsions were made legal. "They destroy us slowly," Basel says in voiceover. "Every day, another house." Eventually they even come for the school -- while it is still in session. There is footage of the army locking the children into the building, the teachers frantically helping them escape out of a window moments before the bulldozers come and destroy the once saved elementary school.
As the film begins Basel befriends co-director Yuval Abraham, who he calls a "human rights Israeli." Learning Arabic, Yuval shares, changed his political views. He refused to work as an Intelligence officer for the Army. "You come here like you expect to fix everything in ten days," Basel tells Yuval after he stresses that one of his articles did not get enough clicks. "This has been going on for decades. It requires patience."
As this harrowing film, the collaborative work of Basel, Yuval, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor, came to its coda — footage of the rising settler violence post-October 7th — Basel's statement, "This has been going on for decades" echoed in my mind.
If you've been reading this newsletter for awhile, you probably have read about a lot of Palestinian films over the last few months. If you haven't watched any of the films I have recommended, then No Other Land will likely come as a shock to your system. "How can this be happening?!" you might ask yourself. Especially with so much video documentation of these horrific events. Yet, if you have been watching the films I have been recommending you will likely feel an altogether different emotion. "How can this still be happening?" For nearly sixty years there have been documentaries showing footage of this state sanctioned violence, sometimes the exact same violent acts, over and over and over.
I think back to My Neighborhood, a short documentary from 2012 which follows a young boy's fight to save his home in East Jerusalem after his family is similarly expelled due to a legal system that has been rigged against them. I think of The Place that is Ours, in which the filmmaker traces how Palestinian villages have been systematically destroyed both in person and on maps in order erase even their history. I think of Bye Bye Tiberias, in which its clear one's connection to one’s land never leaves them, even if they must in order to live out their dreams.
In A Place of Rage, June Jordan stresses “There are two issues of our time, really, that I think amount to a litmus test for morality as far as I am concerned. One is what you are prepared to do on behalf of the Palestinian people. And the other is what are you prepared to do on behalf of gay and lesbian peoples. I really feel that those two things are co-equal fundaments in my worldview at this time.”
As an American it's not hard to see the parallels between Palestinian liberation and Black liberation in this country. There is a similar misuse of power, of the law, to create a land of hierarchies, and a land with rights that are not a given, are not equal for all. That nonviolent protests are met with violence is no longer shocking. That video footage of this violence has no repercussions is no longer shocking.
As the film ends Basel and Yuval discuss their project and the need for real change to occur. "Somebody watches something and they're touched, and then?" Basel asks.
A white journalist films a man who was paralyzed by a bullet from a soldier who shot him over construction tools. The journalist shrugs, saying he’s covered stories like this for a long time. You get the media’s attention for ten minutes, and then everyone moves on.
Since this film debuted at the Berlin Film Festival in February, where it won both the Panorama Audience Award and the Best Documentary Award, in this country we have seen an active service member self-immolate in protest of the U.S. Army's part in the genocide currently happening in Gaza. Despite the act being broadcast on livestream, the media misrepresented his intentions, and, in what seemed like minutes, the country moved on.
In a world where video footage as a tool to speak truth to power seems to have lost its efficacy, No Other Land exists more as a form of resistance. As a form of witness. As proof of the Palestinian people's unwavering endurance, and as a document of their very existence.
No Other Land was screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It is still seeking U.S. distribution.
Update: The film will also be screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival in the coming weeks.
Update 2: The film will have an awards-qualifying run in New York City at Film at Lincoln Center starting November 1st.