Our Film Has A Power: Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham on No Other Land | Interviews

A revelatory, vérité-style documentary that should go down as one of the year’s defining films, “No Other Land” exposes Israel’s relentless campaign of violence against the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta in a southern area of the occupied West Bank. 

Having lived in their villages since the 19th century, the local population faces the threat of mass expulsion by the Israeli military, which has declared the area a firing zone. As soldiers carry out demolition order after demolition order, their tanks and bulldozers lay waste not only to homes but to schools, water pipes, chicken coops, and even access roads — all part of a systematic effort by Israel’s government to dehumanize and displace the Palestinian people.

Made across five years by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four directors, including journalists Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, “No Other Land” presents images of violence and destruction that lay bare the infuriating brutality of Israel’s occupation — and that echo the devastation in Gaza, where Israel’s ongoing offensive has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis. 

Elsewhere, the film depicts the resilience of Palestinians living in the West Bank and explores the complicated friendship between Adra (who was born in one of the villages there and has been attending demonstrations since he was five years old) and Abraham (born 30 minutes away on the other side of the border separating Israel from the West Bank). Power imbalances present in their lives, in a system of parallel inequality that both refer to as an apartheid state, get at the heart of “No Other Land.” It’s a film not only about Israel’s settler-colonial violence and the system of law used to conceal it, but also about the Kafkaesque absurdity of existence under occupation, modern forms of resistance, and the solidarity found through this collective’s formation. 

“No Other Land” will open at Film at Lincoln Center on Nov. 1 for a week-long qualifying run, making it eligible for the Oscars along with various critics and awards bodies’ year-end prizes; one of the most acclaimed films of the year, it is still seeking U.S. distribution. Since its world premiere earlier this year in Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar section, where it won two major prizes, “No Other Land” has received universal praise from the festival circuit. At this fall’s New York Film Festival, where the film was presented as a Main Slate selection, it drew a strong response from audiences at all its screenings. Adra and Abraham were in attendance (alongside co-director Rachel Szor, also the film’s cinematographer; co-director Hamdan Ballal did not travel to the U.S.) to see the reaction firsthand. 

“In that moment after the film ends, you can always sense the audience and the atmosphere,” Abraham told RogerEbert.com. “There’s always this silence after the film ends that goes on for a very long time. You can hear people crying. Speaking to people after the screenings, we really feel that we managed to say what we wanted to say in the film. Even more importantly, it has a strong emotional impact and is triggering thoughts and conversations amongst audiences.”

In conversation the next day, Adra and Abraham reflected on exposing the structural violence of Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians, cameras as tools of resistance, and their hopes for the film’s U.S. release. The day following our interview, the filmmakers cut short what had been planned as a month-long visit to the U.S., returning to the West Bank and Israel out of concern for the safety of their families. 

With more than 70 Palestinians killed in Gaza, attacks by Jewish settlers escalating in Masafer Yatta, seven Israelis dead in a shooting in the Jaffa neighborhood of Tel Aviv, and Iran launching ballistic missiles at Israel in the wake of Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon — all within a 48-hour period of their time in New York — the filmmakers felt that remaining abroad, and potentially risking their ability to return home altogether in the event of further escalation, could have left them separated from loved ones and compromised their activism work on the ground.

In a statement signed by Adra, Abraham, and Szor before their departure, the filmmakers described the film 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.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Basel, you shared via social media last week that your father, who is also an activist in Masafer Yatta, had been abducted, blindfolded, and restrained by soldiers inside a settlement. Has he been released?

Basel Adra: Yes, they released him. But this is happening today, every day, to people in my community, and it has happened to my father several times. This is part of daily life; they walk into our villages and take people to military bases or settlements. Their excuses would be that you used your phone to take pictures of the soldiers or that you didn’t show them your ID — whatever they can come up with. They come up with excuses, but what’s really happening is that they want to punish people, and they want people to feel that they are here, that they are the bosses, that they’re standing here and are not going anywhere.

You made this film between 2019 and 2023 to document the expulsion of the people of Masafer Yatta. The dispossession there dates back decades, but part of the power of “No Other Land” is its compression of time to reveal this strategic campaign of Palestinian displacement. Over the years, Israel has orchestrated what you’ve called a “slow-moving expulsion” through the systematic denial of building permits, the declaration of military firing zones, the establishment of Jewish settlements, and other “legal” processes. Your film exposes not only the escalation of this policy but its overarching intent.

Adra: As you said, they try to hide this policy because they have a certain plan, which is to displace us Palestinians, at least from Area C, which is 60% of the West Bank, toward Area A and Area D, to empty this area for the settlements to be expanded. When you take in the bigger picture, this is also to prevent Palestinians from having their own state, but that is how they do it in action. 

And actually, Israel has the power to achieve this within days. They could bring buses and trucks, and they could take all the Palestinians from Area C out, and that would be it. They’d set up checkpoints and prevent anybody who is Palestinian from re-entering there. But I think, for a long time, they didn’t do this because this would be a hard picture to show the U.S. government and the world; it would require a lot of excuses and explanations, and this would harm their picture in front of the international community. So, their plan was to do it slowly by making our lives miserable, as Palestinians living there, through different policies. The main one is the law: to make everything about our life illegal and to make everything about a settler’s life legal, in terms of building outposts, farms, and settlements. 

This was part of the challenge for us in building the film’s narrative, because those are the politics. They’ve been doing this across decades and not all through the same policy. It’s different policies, different actions, and not all the actions continue in a straight line. In one year, demolitions will increase; in another, they’ll lessen. And it’s the same with settlers’ attacks; they’ll allow settlers to carry out pogroms here and there, and they’ll only sometimes catch them, then let them go. With building the settlements, they’ll also plan around elections; during the pandemic, when the world was not focusing on it, they’d build more. This was not easy to show, but it was also not hard for us to see because we lived there. We’re living day by day under this occupation. We understand why they’re moving this and doing that, and this is what we wanted to exhibit to the world. It was not easy to show it in the form of a documentary or in the story of a movie, but we managed it.

Yuval Abraham: At the end of the day, the film takes place across 20 years because it starts in the past of Basel’s childhood and crunches down 20 years to 90 minutes. And when you do that, you can see ongoing policies that you can only see if you squeeze them to 90 minutes because they are forms of structural violence. And, often, structural violence is not seen by people because it’s so daily, so routine. Every week, another house is demolished. Our documentary is an attempt to give a human face to the effects of structural violence. 

“No Other Land” was filmed from multiple devices, including handheld 4K cameras with which you both filmed, and phone cameras you picked up to document incidents that you came across. Israeli soldiers and settlers don’t want to be seen carrying out crimes or engaging in illegal activities, and there are incidents in which you’re attacked for filming. In other moments, the fact that you’re filming appears to cause soldiers to leave a certain area.

Adra: The camera came to Masafer Yatta a long time ago. The reason was that international activists had started to come to the area for the first time, and they brought these cameras. Before that, what happened in Masafer Yatta stayed in Masafer Yatta because nobody saw what was happening. Soldiers did whatever they wanted and walked away. 

Suddenly, those activists came into the area with cameras, which was new to people in the area. This was in 2000 when they first started coming. Over the years, more activists would come in with cameras. They would teach locals how to use these cameras, and they later left some cameras with certain people in my community, such as my family, to film what would happen when the activists were not there. And this helped people in different cases. The army would do something and then deny it, only to be surprised when our lawyer would come in with a video that people took in the field to prove that they were lying. It helped in several cases that our community would win because of having a camera to protect them. 

For years, settlers and soldiers would act differently when they saw us with cameras. They didn’t want to be seen doing illegal acts or committing crimes — unless they were very sure that they could control you. For example, if they’re attacking a community, and they see one activist or two with one camera, and they have the chance to attack this person and to destroy this camera, they will do it. They’ve done it many, many, many times. 

Many people were harmed. American activists have been beaten up, and their cameras were stolen or destroyed. Israeli activists, as well, people of other nationalities — and Palestinians, definitely. Soldiers and settlers have harmed me for using a camera and filming them. They hate it. And, in the film, you can see how much they hate that they were on camera. They would create checkpoints; several times, we’d be together, following bulldozers for the whole week to film them, and they would block us with a military car until the bulldozers finished the demolition. They try to put pressure on us. They have invaded my home as well, and they have confiscated cameras and laptops. 

In many of these situations, there’s no way to know whether an incident will turn violent in a way that will require you to retreat from what you’re filming, and you’re often running into potentially dangerous situations to film, as well. Were there any particular rules you kept in mind while filming to try to ensure your safety while capturing this footage?

Adra: It’s hard because it’s happening in my community. I’m not a journalist of the world coming from outside. I’m part of this community. I’m not just there with a camera, focusing on what I’m filming; many times, also, my brothers, my father, and my neighbors are there. It’s very difficult because I can’t just run away and leave people behind me who settlers or soldiers are attacking. 

This has happened several times, and it’s really challenging. It’s my community. If I run away also several times, they can chase me to my home because they know the village very well. They know where I live, exactly. We try our best to be safe, but we can’t always succeed because they have more power, and they always try to find ways to harm us.

Yuval, while accepting the audience award for best documentary at the Berlinale, you denounced the “situation of apartheid” in the West Bank and called for a ceasefire in Gaza; Israeli media and German officials labeled the speech as “antisemitic,” and you received death threats in response. The misuse of that term to silence those speaking out against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, even Israelis like yourself, is a disgrace; it leads me to ask you both about terminology as it relates to your filmmaking and activism. Tell me about the challenges you’ve faced in discussing “No Other Land” and the apartheid reality it depicts and about the importance of framing the situation in these terms. 

Abraham: There’s something about filmmaking that is not as rooted in terminology. The images speak for themselves. I know that, in U.S. politics, there is a lot of emphasis on how people speak and which words they use to describe the realities in Israel and Palestine. That’s important in my mind, but I would not want to overemphasize it. People who are in the United States are seeing how urgent the struggle is for Palestinian freedom, how urgent the struggle is to end the apartheid situation, for there to be equality in the land, and for there to be mutual security for Palestinians and Israelis. If you look at Gaza and what’s happening there, people in the U.S. are coming from a position of privilege; their priority should not necessarily be the terminology that people use. It should be what they mean. 

I know there is a trend, often, to very quickly refuse political alliances because the other person is not using the exact terminology you are using. I find that to be problematic in U.S. politics. Especially as the U.S. has so much influence and power over the ongoing occupation, and change in U.S. foreign policy can make things better, the priority should be achieving that change. If that means, in U.S. politics, broadening the political scope and having a political alliance with people who maybe don’t use the same words that you use, finding enough in common with them to actually get political change done, that is, in my mind far more important than the words that people say. The words we say are our statements. As you know, we’re very political people, and we’ve made very strong political statements, but moving things in a direction to change reality, in my mind, is far more important. 

Adra: But we must focus on calling it what it is. We had this problem that happened after Berlin because Yuval called the situation apartheid, and I called upon German lawmakers to stop sending weapons to Israel. But we use these words in accordance with the international laws that Israel is violating. 

And we show the apartheid situation in the movie in pictures; these settlers can have everything that they want. They can build expansive settlements, and they can come to and from wherever they want; just because they’re Jews, it’s legal for them to come in and build these settlements. For us, who’ve lived there for decades, it’s illegal to have clean water and electricity in our homes. 

What else can you call this? In one land, one people, because of their identity, can have whatever they want, and it’s legal, but for other people who have been living there for decades, everything is illegal. We show this as well, Yuval and I, as characters in the film: he can move wherever he wants, but I can’t go here or there.

This film was made by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers. To what degree have you seen political attitudes shifting in Israel, especially in younger generations, in response to the violence of Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and its escalating genocide in Gaza?

Abraham: To be honest, the political views are shifting, but they’re shifting to the right. This, in my mind, is related to two things. The first is that the Israeli occupation has been going on for so many decades, and I think what that has inevitably involved is the dehumanization of the Palestinian people. When generation after generation are tasked with enforcing this occupation, that influences society. 

The second is October 7. Israeli society faced real crimes on that day, which were capitalized upon by a government that immediately weaponized the grief in Israeli society to annihilate the Gaza Strip completely, killing more children in the first three weeks than have died in conflicts all over the world in the past four years. There have been horrible war crimes, and this has placed a society in a situation where, right now, there is consensus from wall to wall about justifying war crimes in Gaza.

Today, we do not have a political party calling for and actively working for any political solution, whether it’s a bi-national or one-state solution, a two-state solution, a confederation, or any kind of political horizon based on international law, on ending the oppression of Palestinians, on reaching equality and security between Palestinians and Israelis. We just don’t have that politically; there is no political horizon at all. 

The role of the U.S. here is very important. I do see a day—though this may take a few years—where certain sections of Israeli society could shift, especially so-called “liberal Israelis” living in Tel Aviv and seeing themselves as part of the Western world, working in high tech, for whom a connection to Europe and the U.S. is important. That could happen if there is U.S. pressure, making it clear to Israelis that this is not sustainable, that you cannot go on controlling millions of people under military occupation, that you need to reach a political solution.

It’s not only about improving conditions for Palestinians. It will be better for Israelis as well; you cannot live in the land as an oppressor and expect normal life. It’s not sustainable. If the U.S. changes foreign policy, it will take time, but we may see a shift in public opinion in Israel. But, right now, it’s shifting for the worse, unfortunately. 

You say at one point that this is a film about power. As much as we’ve discussed Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and the violence of the power imbalance that exists there today, has sharing this film been an empowering experience in any sense?

Abraham: This is an issue that people all over the world, and especially in the United States, usually have strong and already-formulated opinions around, or it’s an issue that sparks intense emotions in people. I believe our film has a power that touches on very deep layers of this issue. We made it not only to engage with people who agree with our political status and views, but actually to have a conversation, to bring in people in the United States who feel differently or feel they have different political opinions to ours. I urge those people to watch the film. 

Words have power, but anything we say, I feel, does a disservice to what we are showing in the film itself. At the end of the day, I think that’s the power of the image. That’s the power of the film. I think it does have the power to change the hearts and minds of people. I would be curious to see that. I hope it gets seen by millions of people in the U.S. I really do hope that we can show it here, and I’m curious to see what the reaction will be.

Adra: It’s very hard, these days, to say in any way that we have power. It’s very sad, and it’s very dark right now. At least there is power in that we are mobilizing many people to speak about what’s happening. I hope this movie will be seen, really seen, by a lot of people. That would mean a lot to us, and we hope to influence people: not just to change their minds but to move them to act and to keep us in mind.

“No Other Land” opens at Film at Lincoln Center in New York on Nov. 1, for an exclusive one-week run. The film is still seeking wider U.S. distribution.