After One Family on a completely different theme, this is the second documentary punch of this 2024 cuvée of the Swiss festival Real Visions. No Other Land Moreover, he will go back to the audience's prize, which had already been the best documentary at the last edition of the Berlinale... Back on an out-of-standard movie and obviously burning up news.
Duo unlikely
BAssel Adra lives in the West Bank, specifically in Masafer Yatta, a desert area captured by the Israeli army for military exercises. On the other side, Yuval Abraham is Israeli. The two young men are natural enemies, at least on paper. But it is nothing. Both of them denounce the barbarity of the state of Israel, taking over this desert by expelling entire families whose houses are shaved overnight by hordes of bulldozers protected by the army. Accompanied by Hamdan Ballal & Rachel Szor, this Palestinian-Israeli collective decides to make a film about the inhumanity of this policy of colonization.
Basel was born into a family of activists. His father, who owns the only gas station in the village built under his house, is a regular Israeli jail. The rebellion, Basel it was in the blood and the hour of social networks and at all digital, he understood the strength of the images. Thus the people of the region contact him to document, eviction after eviction, destruction after destruction, the political devastating colonizing Israel. Soon accompanied by his new Yuval acolyte, they will travel the region together according to the dismantling orders. And their cameras are going to be very quickly annoying Israeli officials...
Incarnate Journalism
One remembers irritating (but exciting) France by Bruno Dumont, shooting at a section of journalism, including the famous incarnate journalism. A practice that has existed for a long time, now largely imposed by social networks that have changed the lines today in crisis. Incarnation allows not only to drain a wider audience, to specialize in often very specific themes and, sometimes, to become his own media, but all this is not done without a certain setback of the medal. Abandoning journalistic rigour or professional ethics, the reporter risks becoming the very center of his story, the own hero of his reports.
With No Other Land, we are miles away from this kind of practice. If the on-screen duo does (we will follow them into their personal lives), their presence will never take precedence over the subject they want to wear on the screen, quite the contrary. Better, the (small) part of the documentary focused on this atypical duo of journalists will feed and enrich the very subject of the feature film. No Other Land The aim will then be to document from within the political and judicial machinery at work on the ground in the systematic destruction of houses in this region of the West Bank.
Graduation in horror
It must be noted that the film is crossed by a certain crescendo of violence, as striking as it is icy. Turning from inside, camera to fist, the image seems to be a very frail weapon in front of the assault rifles cluttering the chests of the clusters of soldiers mobilized to protect bulldozers. A few minutes, and now an entire village disappears in the dust lifted by their buckets. The images are terrifying, the inhumanity of the various protagonists takes to the throat and absurdity of the steps – Israel decides that an area inhabited for hundreds of years becomes overnight an area forbidden to carry out its military exercises – only increases the fear felt in the face of these scenes.
These inhumane soldiers obeying orders, these houses searched and emptied, these cases piled up too bulky to be transported, these whole families in exile, these coldly shot bodies,... All this procession of visions connects in our minds to the imagery surrounding the darkest hours of our history. Inhumanity generates another, state violence spreads like a virus up to these images, obscene of despair, of masked settlers attacking with stones and bullets to the Palestinians fleeing under the complicity of the military.
Hope film?
It is difficult to answer this question, as the documentary ends on a bitter note that will leave the room full of the audience of Real Visions perfectly stunned. Of course, the Israeli's vision of joining his Palestinian friend day after day to document in the text and image the abuses of a government-bureau suggests that dialogue is possible. Unfortunately the political force is at work and the (salutary) work of Yuval and Basel seems as frail as well as ephemeral. How long will they be able to rob these soldiers of their cameras without their actions going unpunished? Worse still, how long can they endure the violence they witness on a daily basis?
And unfortunately for them who are finishing their feature film in October 2023, recent events will not contribute to reducing the pressure they are experiencing day after day, nor to the rain of death threats falling on them.
https://twitter.com/yuval abraham/status/1761857460434825366?ref src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1761857460434825366%7Ctwgr%5E7e27b5f3dabc77b33e858bb0ac99cca09a607645%7Ctwcon%5Es1 c10&ref url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.francetvinfo.fr%2Fworld%2Fproche-orient%2Fisrael-palestine%2Fle-cineaste-israelien-recompense-a-berlin-for-a-documentary-corealise-with-a-Palestinian-recoit-des-thres-in-his-country 6393769.html
However, the award for "best documentary" received at the Berlinale seems to have infused No Other Land and its directors a certain momentum, which could act as a voice for an international community determinedly shy to put words on what is currently happening in Gaza. An embarrassment carried to the very heart of the Berlinale, where the evocation of the current genocidal situation in Gaza triggered a veritable outcry of condensed reactions in the this article from the World.
« Basel and I are the same age. I'm Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. And in two days, we will return to a land where we are not equal. This apartheid situation between us, this inequality, it must cease. »
Let us also recall these images of the only enemy at work in such conflicts: the fascisation of a society run by the extreme right. Let us not leave room for these fractures so easily instrumentalised – anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism – and keep in mind that this very artificial cleavage (the documentary proves it perfectly by its own device) serves no other than vultures of a deadly policy.
Let us beware that these rewards and the success achieved (the documentary has made room for Real Vision and received the award from the public) pushes this striking film to be seen as widely as possible. Perhaps the most powerful documentary you will be given this year, enlightening the darkest corners of what is happening in the West Bank. To see absolutely!
[...] documentary No Other Land, directed by a Palestino-Israeli collective gives the subject to think the shadow zones [...]
[...] The documentary No Other Land is also carried by the urgency to document the horror of reality. Directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, this « film-control » suggests the shadow zones of a colonial war that does not say its name, although it has been more hidden for ages. A pioneering film: in six months, the United Nations has recorded more than 700 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank. On 29 May 2025, Israel announced the establishment of 22 new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the issue of doing so in the Gaza Strip is regularly discussed in the Knesset. [...]