BULLET REVIEW: NO OTHER LAND — Academy Award winner for best documentary
Now playing at The Film Forum 209 W Houston St NY NY; Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn 445 Albee Square West Brooklyn NY; BAM Rose Cinemas 30 Lafayette Ave Bklyn NY
This is a link to the trailer:
Over a period of 5 years two young filmmaker/journalists, Palestinian, Basel Adra and Israeli, Yuval Abraham captured the story of a West Bank village where families, including Mr. Adra’s, have lived for over a century.
It’s a narrative of hopeless despair and raw injustice. We watch as the Israeli army repeatedly shows up in armored caravans to protect bulldozers being driven into homes and schools, forcing villagers to hastily gather their possessions and move into caves.
A young man clinging to the family’s generator, that the soldiers are dragging away, is shot and paralyzed from the neck down.
The army claims to need their land as a training ground. A note displayed before the credits tells us that documents have exposed this to have been a pretext to clear land for settlements. A petition to stop the eviction is rejected by the Israeli courts and we see the rows of settler apartments on a hillside next to their village. Footage captures a raid by armed settlers as they murder one of the unarmed villagers confronting them.
If there is a glimmer of hope, it was in the Oscar acceptance speeches by these two talented, intensely focussed, humble young men, that left me in tears.
Here is the link to that story on NPR WAMU’s website; https://www.npr.org/2025/03/02/g-s1-51721/no-other-land-best-documentary-oscars-2025
Rachel Szor, left, Hamdan Ballal, Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham accept the Oscar for best documentary feature film for No Other Land.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
