No Other Land

There is no other land and there should be no need for one.

A tragic story of greed and inhumanity that has been falling on deaf years for decades because one country is powerful and has powerful friends and allies and the other one has nothing to offer, therefore nobody cares what happens to it outside of a few minutes or days of noteworthy news and public outcry, which also tends to die down quickly as people go about their daily business and forget about the sorrows of people in a faraway land whom they'll never meet. That too is a story as old as time and history never seems to teach us much. When the weak become powerful they forget what it was like and they become oppressors without a second thought.

What a tame word "settler" is. It doesn't say anything, when in fact it means occupier.

The winner of this years Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars (despite not having a major distributor for release in the United States), No Other Land is a warts and all account of a relatively unknown struggle taking place in West Bank's Masafer Yatta region where local Palestinian residents are battle occupation at the hands of Israeli forces.

A collaboration between directors Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, with Abraham and Adra front and centre to this DIY as the two join forces to help protest and cover the multi-decade spanning battle, Land may not provide anything ground-breaking from a filmmaking sense but its a powerful reminder of the voice cinema can have when it comes to issues that deserve the publics attention.

Making for likable faces to a very confronting and traumatic subject matter, Adra and Ballal arm themselves with handheld cameras and phones to capture years worth of footage as the Israeli military undertakes an increasingly intense operation to flatten the Masafer Yatta community on its way to developing a "military training ground", amounting to a perilous and intense journey that acts as a heartfelt call to action to halt the mistreatment of this populated area of the West Bank.

There's no particular rhyme or reason to the way Land unfolds, a product of the fluid nature of the filming that was merely there to capture what was unfolding not manufacture it, Land may lack a central narrative destination there's little mystery as to why this little film that could has managed to make such a big mark across the globe over the past 12 months with it harbouring a humanistic message at its core that makes us all realise that day to day tensions and carnage in the Middle East is increasingly running at boiling point.

Not easy viewing by any stretch of the imagination, witnessing peoples lives be destroyed before your very eyes its hard to bare and Land refuses to shy away from the casualties of its examination as innocent bystanders are shot and beaten on camera, showcasing the harsh realities of what happens when a corrupt force is allowed to run rampant.

An important piece of modern day documentary filmmaking, Land isn't perfect and is unquestionably rough around the edges but its essential viewing to anyone with a keen interest in journalistic feature film and anyone seeking to gain insights into current global situations that we should all be across.

Final Say -

A worthy Oscar winner that shines a light on a little known yet important topic, No Other Land is an insightful piece of filmmaking bought to life by two invested and reasonable central figures.

4 petrol stations out of 5

Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)

No Other Land is one of the most important documentaries of this present moment -- it is a shame (but not a surprise) that it's become somewhat difficult to find/see anywhere.

Like 20 Days in Mariupol did with Russia's 2022 siege of Mariupol in Ukraine, it speaks to us bluntly right from the eye of the storm, that storm being the Israeli occupation of Palestine (chiefly the demolition of the filmmaker's home region in the West Bank, in this case). It may seem infantile to use terms like "pure evil", but there's basically no other way to describe some of what we witness in this footage.

It also involves a fascinating friendship, as Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who documents the gradual ruination of his home in Masafer Yatta on video, finds a connection with an Israeli journalist named Yuval Abraham, who wishes to help him, even as it becomes clear he can never quite understand his struggle. Nevertheless, their material became this film; both are credited as directors and writers alongside Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, who is also Israeli.

Why this film would be inconvenient for Israel-sympathizers is obvious (when the film began to receive awards recognition, the IDF promptly surrounded Adra's home). But its central friendship -- and the fact that the friend in question demonstrably agreed to help get this movie made -- likely makes it inconvenient for those who use this conflict as an excuse for anti-Semitism, asserting that any Israeli person or even any Jewish person is fair game to brand a monster, if not outright kill.

Fact is, there are plenty like Abraham and Szor. For as much as Zionists like to insist that all "true" Jewish people ARE, in fact, on board with the whole Zionism thing (and in so doing they effectively agree with the aforementioned anti-Semites), there are several Jewish people and indeed Israeli citizens who are aghast at the idea that their ancestors survived The Holocaust only for the descendants to rework "Never again" into "Never again... to us".

No Other Land was a quieter kind of angry than I was expecting, but I think that approach is the kind of thing that could well change a person's mind on the whole ordeal if they were to seek this out. I guess with documentaries on subjects like this, getting someone who already feels a certain way to watch this when they might want to otherwise resist an alternate point of view is the difficult part, but there's still a lot of madness in the world, and the approaches that have been taken to sway people haven't really been working.

So it's not that No Other Land reinvents the documentary genre as a whole, but I think it has a distinctive way of presenting its central thesis. It's not peaceful, but there is a quietness to it that will likely lead some people to reflect on what they might've thought about before. Again, if they were to watch No Other Land in the first place. That's a whole other obstacle. But the approach here is more than sound and it's quietly powerful, and I'd hope that's an ultimately effective way to do it.

This did have some slower moments as far as the editing goes, but there were other sequences that had fantastic editing, and there's some striking imagery in here, too. I don't think it's a perfect documentary but it is an important one ("important" is a word I'm sure every review of this has used, oh well). Watch it regardless of how you feel about the conflict in question and I think it will help, so long as you go in open-minded. It's not necessarily subtle (and it shouldn't be), but it isn't aggressive, and if it does change minds - which I hope it can - I think that might be the reason why.

One minute you're in your home, the next minute it's demolished by The Israeli Army, and further, you're not allowed to drive, and told it's illegal to be on the land, that reality is captured on film.

Where to begin, first off, it fully deserves the many accolades, it's not just a fascinating storyline and a daring piece of journalism, but it's actually a terrifically well made documentary, it's impressive.

There are no grey areas or 'misreading' of events here, it doesn't really matter which side of the fence you sit on, and whether you lean one way or the other, it will hammer home just how appallingly The Israeli Army behaved, against people who literally had nothing, and could offer zero credible resistance. You see what it is to live under occupation.

Several times it had me in tears, if you're not moved by it, I'd suggest there's something seriously wrong.

There are some astonishing moments, the scenes between Basel and Yuval are fascinating, two incredibly brave men.

Revealing, powerful and sobering, don't go in expecting any happy resolutions, as we all know this painful, excruciating war marches on.

This will make every liquid in your body boil with anger and rage, it's obscene. Please someone find a way to end this.

10/10.