The people of Masafer Yatta are brave in the face of genocide. Their mountainous region, home of 20 ancient Palestinian villages on the West Bank, is being encroached upon. Homes and businesses are being demolished. The injustices they endure are being chronicled and archived by filmmakers in “No Other Land,” which recently received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary (Feature). One of the documentarians is Basel Adra, an observer/activist/writer who is part of this community and is cataloguing everything as his people are being forced into a nomadic life.
Over the course of five years, during an onslaught of intimidation and violence, the filmmaker team chronicled what they could. Andra’s friend and co-writer/director Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, is with him every step of the way, on camera and off. Rachel Szor, an Israeli cinematographer/editor/director, along with Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian photographer/filmmaker, are the two other members of this Palestinian/Israeli collective. They show and tell all they see and hear regardless of threats, danger, and personal injury.
In just 92 minutes, their footage reveals enough drama, history, aggression, ingenuity, persistence, courage, struggle, and hostility to fill a year-long docuseries. So much of what is packed into this nonfiction film is relevant, current, and dire, in ways that make your eyes stay glued to the screen. It’s amazing that this story is getting out, the people of Masafer Yatta and their sense of community are still alive, and these steadfast citizens can control their own narrative.
If the job of an investigative documentary is to expose truth, especially when others won’t, the two filmmakers in front of the camera, Basel and Yuval, along with Szor and Ballal, are extraordinary documentarians. Their smartphones and cameras don’t miss much; certainly not the grief Basel’s mother expresses after his brother has been gunned down and paralyzed by Israeli soldiers: “They shot my son in front of me. I lifted his head, and his blood poured on me.”
Her words are shocking and the visuals of what’s happening to the Abraham family and their village is even more alarming. There is no let up. Their houses are bulldozed. They move and build more homes, more schools. Then those buildings are leveled. And so on … The reason given for the demolition is that the Israeli army needs the territory to expand its military training ground, but the film shows that the aggressors are stealing the land.
So much of what’s on view is hard to watch, but you feel you must — that you need to be a witness. Someone who will join others in retelling this story, summoning pressure for a halt to the encroachment and encouraging a planning process for a two-state solution. If these Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers can coalesce and work together, so can the leaders of the Palestinian people and Israel. Whoever they may be.
Similarities to other injustices are obvious. The genocide of Native Americans, America’s Jim Crow segregation laws and civil rights abuses, the troubles in Northern Ireland, South Africa’s Apartheid — and the Holocaust. The parallels are most obvious when Abraham’s people demonstrate, with signs, bullhorns, and cries like: “Palestinian lives matter” and “One, two, three, four, occupation no more.”
There’s a sameness, too, in that sobering, lifesaving talk that Black parents give their kids about how to interact with the police and the harsh reality checks Palestinian parents give their children. That parallel is on view when Basel’s mother says to him in an almost matter-of-fact manner: “Basel, I will wash your clothes so if you go to jail, you’ll have a bag ready.”
This exploration of the plight of the Palestinians and the people of Masafer Yatta is a microcosm of a bigger picture; a small story with gigantic implications. A very personal accounting in which the two lead filmmakers’ eyes and anecdotes become the lens and storyline that expose so much. Basel and Yuval are young, intelligent, articulate, and circumspect. They’re more than willing to reveal their inner thoughts, realities, and frustrations. That’s their demeanor as they continuously witness the largest forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank.
Basel, who has a law degree, is circumspect: “I am stressed because I have nothing to do … Our economy is ruined, and you can only find work in Israel.” His partner Yuval listens attentively, well aware of his privilege: He can go between Israel and the West Bank freely; Basel cannot. Even with that freedom, Yuval experiences his own peril as the right wing in his country harasses him and his family. Watching these two journalists is never less than inspiring; different from but similar in power to the Oscar®-nominated documentary “Last Men in Aleppo,” which covered war-torn Syria.
The cinematography and precision editing by the four filmmakers is as professional as it is purposeful. The people on view, from Basel’s mom and brother to his activist father, humanize a tragedy that doesn’t get the attention it should in the American media. Not the shrinking Palestinian lands, nor the soldiers, settlers, and government that are seemingly driving them to the sea. The footage catches them in the act, just like the videos of George Floyd or Eric Garner.
How many people would literally risk their lives to tell a story? That’s why “No Other Land” is the most powerful nonfiction film of the year. The most profound. Tell someone.
See the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pI2IXKtlew.
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