Israeli-Palestinian Documentary ‘No Other Land’ Wins Oscar for Best Documentary Amid Israel-Palestine Conflict

By: fateh

The collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers triumphed over Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Black Box Diaries, and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.

No Other Land, a film about Palestinians fighting to protect their homes from demolition by Israel’s military, has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

The collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers triumphed on Sunday over Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Black Box Diaries, and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.

The film, produced between 2019 and 2023, follows activist Basel Adra as he risks arrest to document the destruction of his hometown, Masafer Yatta, which Israeli soldiers are tearing down to use as a military training zone in the southern edge of the West Bank.

Adra’s pleas fell on deaf ears until he befriended a Jewish-Israeli journalist, Yuval Abraham, who helped amplify his story.

Accepting the award, Adra said No Other Land reflects the harsh reality Palestinians have endured for decades.

“About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope for my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I’m living now—always fearing settlers, violence, home demolitions, and forcible displacements that my community experiences daily under Israeli occupation,” said Adra.

He also called on the world to “take serious actions to stop the injustice and to end the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”

‘Together, our voices are stronger’

Abraham said they made the film because together their voices were stronger.

“We see each other: The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end. Israeli hostages, brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed,” he said.

Abraham criticized the Israeli regime that destroys Adra’s life, and he emphasized that there is a different path: “a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our peoples.”

However, he noted that the United States’ foreign policy is helping block that path.

“Can’t you see that we’re intertwined—that my people can only be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life for the living. There is no other way,” he added.

The film struggled to find a distributor in the US, so its creators arranged for a one-week run at the Lincoln Center in November to qualify for the Oscars.

The Oscar on Sunday is the latest high-profile honor for No Other Land. It also won the audience award and documentary film award at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024, as well as the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Non-Fiction Film.

The film relies heavily on camcorder footage from Adra’s personal archive. It captures Israeli soldiers bulldozing the village school and filling water wells with cement to prevent residents from rebuilding.

It also shows residents coming together after Adra films an Israeli soldier shooting a local man who was protesting the demolition of his home. The man becomes paralyzed, and his mother struggles to care for him while living in a cave.

More than 500,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank, which is home to about three million Palestinians.

While the settlers have Israeli citizenship, Palestinians live under military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

Major human rights groups have described the situation as apartheid, an allegation rejected by the Israeli government, which views the West Bank as the historical and biblical heartland of the Jewish people and opposes Palestinian statehood.

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