No Other Land: 5th Palestinian film nominated for Oscars

Ahram Online , Tuesday 28 Jan 2025

Palestinian documentary film No Other Land has been nominated for the 97th Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature Film category on Thursday 23 January.

No Other Land

 

No Other Land is the fifth Palestinian film to receive an Oscar nomination after Paradise Now (2005), Omar (2013), Ave Maria (2015), and The Present (2020).

The film is competing with four other nominees in the Best Documentary Feature category this year: Black Box Diaries (Japan), Porcelain War (Ukraine), Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Belgium), and Sugarcane (US/Canada).

No Other Land is directed by four Palestinian and Israeli activists: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Hamdan Ballal.

The film's nomination comes amid a surge in a deadly Israeli crackdown and home demolitions in the occupied West Bank on the heels of a 15-month Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Since the war on Gaza began on 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation forces killed 900 Palestinians, wounded over 6,700, and arrested several thousands in the West Bank. Israeli bulldozers have also destroyed over 1,768 homes and civilian infrastructures. 

Brutal occupation
 

The documentary tells the story of the struggle of Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, against the mass expulsion of his community by the Israeli occupation.

Masafer Yatta is a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets in the Hebron Governorate in the southern West Bank.

Over 3 million Palestinians have lived under brutal, apartheid-type policies since the start of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967.

These policies include a separation wall that encircles/divides Arab homes and agricultural land and over 900 Israeli checkpoints on all roads to paralyze the movement of the native population. They also include continuous confiscation of Arab land to build European-style Israeli settlements with inhabitants now numbering over 700,000 using a Jewish-only road system.

In 2022, the Israeli authorities issued an expulsion order to eight of the hamlets, which had a population of 1,114 - with half of the figure children.

Adra documents the gradual destruction of villages in his area, where Israeli soldiers are systematically demolishing homes and displacing residents.

Eventually, he encounters Abraham, an Israeli journalist who assists him in his struggle. From here, their alliance forms.

The significant disparity between their situations challenged their relationship: while Adra lives under military occupation, Abraham enjoys complete freedom.


Death threats
 

No Other Land premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival and won the Berlinale Documentary Award and the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film.

During the award ceremony, Abraham condemned Israeli policies in the occupied territories, highlighting the polarity between his and Adra’s lives despite both of them living within 30 minutes of each other.

Abraham said he received death threats from a right-wing Israeli mob for his condemnation.

The film went on to scoop over 30 awards at prestigious festivals worldwide.

The 97th edition of the Academy Awards will take place on 2 March.

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