“This is a story about power.”
The Oscar®-nominated documentary No Other Land is a collaboration between Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor, two are Israeli and two Palestinian. It is not a far-reaching in depth look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank. Instead it is very localized and personal.
Adra and his family live in Masafer Yatta, an area in the south of the West Bank made up of several small villages. Families have been living there for many years—some for over a century. It is an area known for having caves, which have been used for homes. But under the pretense of making the area a tank training grounds, the Israeli government ordered the eviction of those living there. The film covers the years of 2019-2023, just before the Gaza conflict reignited.
The people resist, because it is their home, it has always been there home. But every so often a convoy of tanks and bulldozers will come to one of the villages and demolish a home or other structures. Then the convoy goes back the way it came. This is a story about power.
Soldiers come and oversee the destruction. Villagers argue and plead, trying to convince them that this is wrong. The soldiers in full battle gear, weapons in hand, stand impassively, ignoring those whose lives they are tearing apart. This is a story about power.
Those who protest too strenuously could be arrested, but that only happens under the cover of night. (Hamdan does go to jail; Adra escapes arrest.) This is a story about power.
The man who is in charge of demolitions is named Ilan. We see him, always in reflective sunglasses, come to a site and act with swagger and indifference to the people there. His sunglasses reminded me of the guards in Cool Hand Luke, whose glasses were a symbol of spiritual blindness. This is a story about power.
Much of the film involves the efforts of Adra, a Palestinian activist and journalist, and Abraham, an Israeli journalist, as they try to get the story of what is happening in Masafer Yatta into mainstream media. Occasionally they succeed, but news keeps moving to the next story. And Masafer Yatta becomes old news.
The line about this being a story about power, comes about halfway through the film, when Adra recalls then British Prime Minister Tony Blair coming to Masafer Yatta. He walked down the street of one of the villages. A few weeks later the homes and school on that street were removed from the eviction order. A small victory, but one that showed what attention can do.
The film has won numerous awards from film festivals around the world and major critic groups. Yet it has no distributor in the US, either theatrical or streaming. It will find its way into a few theaters, in large part because of its nomination. Perhaps the power of that nomination will push someone to act and bring this film into our consciousness. This is a film about power, and the world needs to know how such power is being used.
