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EXCLUSIVE: The Israeli and Palestinian directors of No Other Land, the award-winning documentary set in the West Bank, are abandoning a U.S. tour and heading home as violence explodes in the region.
Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor cut short what was to have been a month-long visit. (Fellow director Hamdan Billal stayed back in the West Bank and didn’t make the U.S. trip). Adra, a Palestinian from the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, and Abraham, a Jewish Israeli from the city of Be’er Sheva in Southern Israel, participated in a Q&A at the New York Film Festival last Sunday. They were to have taken part in a second Q&A Tuesday night, hours after Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel in apparent retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. That attack, coupled with Israel’s ground invasion of Southern Lebanon, prompted the filmmakers to give up plans to attend the Woodstock Film Festival, AFI Fest in Los Angeles, and SFFILM’s Doc Stories in San Francisco.
In an exclusive interview with Deadline before they headed to the airport, the filmmakers explained how they arrived at their decision.
“I spoke with my parents, Basel spoke with his, and we’re very much afraid and worried for their safety,” Abraham said. “Just in the past 24 or 48 hours, things escalated again very dramatically. Eight Israelis were killed in Jaffa. More than 70 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, and in Basel’s community in Masafer Yatta, [Jewish] settler attacks began escalating again; Iran’s missiles — which killed a Palestinian from Gaza in the West Bank. And we were worried that we will be stuck in the United States, that we won’t be able to even get back.”
Abraham added, “At the end of the day, we are activists and our purpose in life is to be there and to work for change from there. So, it felt like the right thing to do, and I guess above all else is to be with the people we love.”
As an Israeli, Abraham can fly into Ben Gurion International Airport, located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. However, Palestinians require special permission to do so; for that reason, Adra is flying to Amman, Jordan and will attempt to reach his West Bank home from there.
Adra described his priority once he reaches Masafer Yatta: “Being with family and [doing] the work that we do, being in the field with the families, with the people. For me, at least in my area, be with those who face settlers, soldiers’ violence as well.”
No Other Land, winner of the top prize for documentary at the Berlin Film Festival, provides a ground-level view of what it’s like to live day to day in Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 hamlets in a mountainous area south of Hebron. For two decades, Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have fought a decree from the Israeli government ordering them off their land to make way for an Israel Defense Forces live-fire training ground. The expulsion order, one of the largest since the 1967 war, was upheld by Israel’s supreme court in 2022. The film shows the IDF demolishing Palestinian homes, a school, and sealing up a well as part of the expulsion.
The film also explores the perhaps unlikely friendship between Adra and Abraham, who have spent years in common cause to highlight the reality of life for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. But it also shows the different circumstances in which they live; as a Palestinian, Adra is subject to Israeli military law and faces restrictions on his movements; Abraham, as a Jewish Israeli, can move freely and lives under civilian law.
In a statement signed by Adra, Abraham, and Szor announcing their decision to shorten their U.S. trip, the filmmakers described No Other Land as “both a document of a war crime happening now in the occupied West Bank, and a plea for a different future, one without occupation and oppression, one which is based on empathy, respect for international law, and true security and equality between Palestinians and Israelis. It has never been more urgent.”
Yuval expanded on the film’s themes in conversation with Deadline. “It’s very much about the West Bank and the military occupation in the West Bank, but still, we believe as a [filmmaking] collective of Palestinians and Israelis, that the only way forward is a political solution… Especially with regards to the relations between Israelis and Palestinians, it is not something sustainable that you have millions of people who cannot vote, who are living under a foreign military rule. And this has been going on for decades, much before October 7th.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised retaliation for Iran’s missile strike. “Iran made a big mistake tonight — and it will pay for it,” he said following the launch of upwards of 200 missiles. Abraham ascribed cynical motives to Netanyahu’s decision to expand hostilities into Lebanon, as well as his continued prosecution of the war in Gaza, following the Hamas terror attack on Israel almost one year ago.
“This, in my mind, is Netanyahu’s attempt basically to remain prime minister for a very long time,” Abraham said. “It has been clear that if the war [in Gaza] ends and there’s a ceasefire, there will be elections and he will not remain prime minister. He knows that the more time that passes from October 7th, the more the Israeli public will — and it’s already happening — forget or forgive him for the big security collapse on his part [of October 7th].”
Abraham further alleged, “I also think he has an interest, honestly, to try to create a context in the United States where it’s more likely that Donald Trump will be elected [president] and the more the U.S. is dragged into the escalation, the more likely it is that people in swing states will not vote for Kamala Harris.”
The filmmaker also faulted the Biden administration for failing to use its leverage to interrupt fighting in Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas continues to hold dozens of hostages seized on October 7th and has not released the bodies of 39 more who are believed to have died in captivity.
“I don’t think they [the Biden administration] took forceful action to actually enforce those ceasefires,” Abraham said, referring to fitful efforts to mediate between Israel and Hamas. He maintains the White House should push for an end to the killing of civilians and press for a political settlement to hostilities. “I think the United States foreign policy is not helping it happen.”
Adra said international focus on the widening conflict has obscured frightening developments in the West Bank. He told Deadline Israeli settlers and troops are ramping up violent assaults on Palestinians.
“In Area C, such as Masafer Yatta, many Palestinians were shot to death by Israeli settlers and during pogroms where they come to burn homes, properties, attacking people and killing Palestinians. In my specific village, on October 13th — it’s in a video in the movie — a settler and one soldier and another settler enter my community and shot my cousin in the stomach after that Friday prayer,” he said, adding, “[People in] six communities in my area fled from their homes because of settlers, soldiers’ attacks.”
No Other Land will open at Film at Lincoln Center on November 1 for an exclusive one-week run. However, it does not have formal U.S. distribution, despite winning awards at film festivals around the world, from Berlin to CPH:DOX, Sheffield DocFest, Millennium Docs Against Gravity, Visions du Réel and more.
“We have very strong distribution all over Europe and Southeast Asia, and I think it’ll be a very big pity that the U.S. audience, the millions of people living in the states who are, for us at least, one of the most important target audiences that we believe should watch the film, will not get a chance to do so if there will not be strong distribution,” Abraham said. “We are still hopeful that this will happen… We are in touch with several distributors. Nothing is now yet concrete, but there are conversations happening.”
