No Other Land  bravely captures Israel’s evictions of Palestinians in the West Bank. It could win an Oscar on Sunday, but it couldn’t secure a US distributor.

ithin a few minutes into the Oscar-nominated documentary, we see Israeli soldiers barging into a village after a court order is given to demolish Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta of the occupied southern West Bank. A handheld camera captures bulldozers violently tearing down homes while the villagers protest. “We have no other land,” an elderly woman helplessly tells reporters.

The dispossessed Palestinian families are pushed into makeshift rooms inside caves. During the night, a little girl who has just witnessed the horrors of intimidation and violence by Israeli soldiers tosses and turns in her bed, as if swirling. Her mother, tired, trying hard to sleep, feels restless too.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I am spinning so nobody catches me,” the girl replies.

The heartbreaking moment recalls the poignant lines of Palestinian-Canadian poet Rafeef Ziadah: “We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.”

Third Cinema

In the late 1960s, discussing the possibilities of a politically committed cinema distinct from both commercial (first cinema) and art films (second cinema), Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino wrote that “the capacity for synthesis and the penetration of the film image, the possibilities offered by the living document, and naked reality, and the power of enlightenment of audiovisual means make the film far more effective than any other tool of communication.” Solanas and Getino advocated for “third cinema,” especially guerrilla documentaries, where filmmakers would work clandestinely for revolutionary transformation in hostile environments. No Other Land resurrects this radical vision of third cinema in its documentation of the viciousness of the Israeli occupation and the everyday resistance by people in Masafer Yatta.

The Oscar-Nominated Documentary US Distributors Won’t Touch by Agnitra Ghosh, Jacobin, Feb 28, 2025

Throughout the making of “No Other Land” — our documentary about the struggle and resilience of the Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta in the face of Israel’s efforts to expel us — one question persisted: Will anyone even watch this? Will anyone care?

From the moment the film premiered in Berlin last year, the answer became clear. Thousands of messages of solidarity, inquiries about how to watch it, and invitations from film festivals around the world proved that there was an overwhelming appetite to hear our story. And last month, it was even nominated for an Oscar.

This is a tremendous achievement — not just for us as filmmakers, but for the activists, friends, and partners in the struggle who spend long hours in the field, facing violence and arrest in the fight against oppression and colonization. It is also a testament to the lawyers who persist in Israeli courts, determined to secure any means of helping Palestinians remain on their land within a system designed to legitimize the occupation.

But first and foremost, it is a victory for the people of Masafer Yatta, a collection of small villages at the southern tip of the occupied West Bank, whose resilience reflects their unwavering commitment to their land. While the occupation seeks to erase their existence, their steadfastness continues to inspire us to resist, document, and fight for justice.

Despite the exciting success of the film in festivals and among journalists and audiences around the world, however, the situation here on the ground is deteriorating rapidly and the future looks bleak. Over the past 16 months, Israeli settlers and the military have taken advantage of the atmosphere of the war to reshape reality in Masafer Yatta in favor of settlers and their outposts, intensifying their efforts to displace us from our land. Even as I write this, the Israeli army is conducting a major demolition operation in the community of Khalet A-Daba, razing homes, toilets, solar panels, and trees. 

Our film is going to the Oscars. But here in Masafer Yatta, we’re still being erased. As the world watches ‘No Other Land,’ Israeli settlers are raiding and burning our villages while soldiers arrest us, abuse us, and demolish our homes by Basel Adra, +972 Magazine, February 10, 2025