No Oth­er Land review – a micro­cosm of Pales­tin­ian resistance

Art is polit­i­cal, and none more trans­par­ent­ly so than doc­u­men­tary No More Land. Pre­sent­ed at the 2024 Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, the film’s co-direc­tor Yuval Abra­ham explained its premise: ​“We stand before you togeth­er. I am Israeli; Basel [Adra] is Pales­tin­ian. […] In two days we will go back to a land where we are not equal. This apartheid has to end.” Abra­ham was not alone in protest­ing the Israeli occu­pa­tion, but while this recent wave of cam­paign­ing was sparked by the accel­er­at­ed vio­lence that has occurred after the Hamas attack of Octo­ber 7^th, what makes this film poignant is that it cov­ers hap­pen­ings with­in the West Bank up until right before that fate­ful moment.

Demo­li­tion orders have become com­mon­place in Masafer Yat­ta, Adra’s neigh­bour­hood in the West Bank. The Israeli gov­ern­ment has decreed that this land, farmed by gen­er­a­tions of Pales­tini­ans for a cen­tu­ry, must be bull­dozed into a mil­i­tary train­ing ground. With­out warn­ing, any of the fam­i­lies could be forced to flee and watch help­less­ly as their homes crum­ple like paper. Like Bat­man, Basel rush­es to film the car­nage as soon as he receives a call. As we watch, one girl hyper­ven­ti­lates and whis­pers, ​“No, please,” – yet anoth­er child­hood is crushed, and the image is added to the list of crimes that this state should be held account­able for.

“We wel­come any­one who stands with us,” a res­i­dent states as he wel­comes Yuval, an Israeli jour­nal­ist, into his home for gin­ger cof­fee. Yuval gets stuck in, help­ing lay the cement to rebuild a home in the mid­dle of the night. His new friends tease him on his slow pace. Fresh-faced and typ­ing up arti­cles on every demo­li­tion, Basel jokes that Yuval eager­ly wants to end the occu­pa­tion in 10 days. Mean­while Basel’s mem­o­ries of a sheep farm­ing youth are taint­ed by the arrest of his father. Two decades lat­er, he treads the same path, lead­ing protests three times a week.

The claus­tro­pho­bia of the dimin­ish­ing West Bank is empha­sised through­out. While Yuval can move freely across the coun­try, we don’t see his cushi­er life. The cam­era instead remains with Basel, depressed and doom­scrolling on his phone in a half-built house, law degree and accom­pa­ny­ing youth­ful opti­mism gath­er­ing dust. One frus­trat­ing detail is the halt­ing of a demo­li­tion of a school and its street, only because Tony Blair vis­it­ed the pro­test­ers. Clear­ly West­ern pow­ers can pre­vent the car­nage, but that requires ally­ship like Yuval’s to cross the pond into the cor­ri­dors of power.

While Basel runs towards the dan­ger with his lens trained on the colonis­ers, the act of film­ing makes him a tar­get, so he lives a pre­car­i­ous exis­tence trained simul­ta­ne­ous­ly towards and away from the guns. It is ter­ri­fy­ing work, and briefly step­ping into his shoes, the shak­ing cam­era blur­ri­ly film­ing the ground. There is no relief in the final frames of the film, only more destruc­tion. The bat­tle is uphill and it rages on. No Oth­er Land exem­pli­fies the brav­ery and patience of activists and jour­nal­ists. The occu­pa­tion start­ed over 70 years ago, and togeth­er, this unlike­ly pair cap­ture its inhu­man­i­ty with humanity.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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