SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 3.2.2025
On a glitzy night in Hollywood when a kow towing cinema industry shamefully bowed down to the Nazi Felon President Trump there was a notable exception.
The Palestinian Israeli produced film “No Other Land” which chronicles the destruction of a Palestinian village, in an act which the director described as “ethnic cleansing”, by the Israel military won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Despite the fact this gripping documentary received rave reviews and awards including best documentary at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival in 2024 no American large scale distributor has picked up the film.
For fear of offending the powerful Israeli lobby in America, the Israeli government and the current regime in Washington “No Other Land” cannot be readily seen in Trump’s America.
That should now change.
No Other Land is a 2024 documentary film directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor in their directorial debut. The film was made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four activists in what they describe as an act of resistance on the path to justice during the ongoing conflict in the region. – excerpted from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Other_Land
Excerpted from The Guardian 3.2.2025
The West Bank-based film No Other Land has won this year’s best documentary feature Oscar.
Despite acclaim, the film could not find distribution in the US and was self-distributed instead. The Guardian’s Adrian Horton called it “straightforward, un-sensationalized and completely infuriating” in a five-star review.
The film, which is made by a Palestinian–Israeli collective, won out against competition from Black Box Diaries, Porcelain War and Sugarcane.
No Other Land premiered at the Berlin film festival last year where it won the Berlinale documentary award. The film was made between 2019 and 2023 and focuses on the steady forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Masafer Yatta, a region in the occupied West Bank targeted by Israeli forces.
Speaking to a standing ovation, the film-makers thanked the Academy before co-director Basel Adra said he had recently become a father and hoped his daughter’s life would not be like his – “always fearing certain violence, home demolitions and forced displacement”.
He continued by saying his film reflected “the harsh reality” that his fellow Palestinians had endured for many years, “as we call on the world to take serious action to stop the injustice and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”.
Co-director Yuval Abraham then took to the stage to say that Palestinians and Israelis had made the film together “because together our voices are stronger. We see each other the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people must end.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/03/no-other-land-wins-best-documentary-feature-oscar
Excerpted from The New York Times 3.3.2025 – Marc Tracy
Most Political Speech
It was not surprising that “No Other Land” took home the Oscar for best documentary feature. Nor was it surprising that, upon accepting the award, the filmmakers would discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the demolition of homes in the West Bank.
But the acceptance speeches by two of the film’s four credited directors, the Palestinian activist Basel Adra and the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, notably did not hold back from a kind of rhetoric not ordinarily heard in mainstream American discourse. Adra called on the world to “stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”
Abraham condemned “the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people” (he also characterized Israeli hostages in Gaza as victims of “the crime of Oct. 7” who were “brutally taken”). The remarks were delivered eloquently by filmmakers who have lived, seen and documented some of the events they sought to describe. They also entered a political maelstrom, with a presidential administration that has sought to transfer Gaza’s Palestinian population and a film industry rived by charges that its pro-Palestinian voices have been insensitive to Israeli suffering and antisemitism generally.
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