A testimony of life under brutal occupation and Palestinian resilience.
Basel Adra is a young Palestinian activist and filmmaker who has, for as long as he can remember, been taught to film the atrocities committed against him, his family, and his land. Following in the footsteps of his father—an activist who has led protests against the Israeli occupation since his 20s—No Other Land is Basel’s attempt at picking up the baton passed down from his father, an inheritance not through ceremony, but necessity.
He documents life in Masafer Yatta, a village that has, in recent years, been swallowed whole by the Israeli military and turned into a training ground. It means it is now illegal for Palestinians to live there. Illegal to rebuild a wall or a roof. Illegal to exist—even if their ancestral roots in the area stretch back to the 1830s.
Alongside Basel is Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist with whom he develops a strange, special bond. Yuval wants to help the Palestinians, and he is sincere in his intentions. But sincerity is a fragile thing in the face of rifles and bulldozers. He is inevitably met with hesitation and doubt in Basel’s community. Together, they film the slow erasure of a people—houses reduced to rubble, families scattered like dust.
This was life in Palestine before 7 October.
The heart of the film lies in the way Basel and Yuval move around each other. It's tempting to watch this and claim, “Look, an Israeli and a Palestinian can be friends. Peace can work.” But that’s too easy. No Other Land doesn’t offer easy answers. What shines here is that Yuval doesn’t represent Israel nor Palestine. He stands as a witness that, in turn, stands for the rest of us—the rest of the world.
Their conversations are frequent, but they often fall short. There are many blank spaces, many questions, and very few answers. There’s this scene: they’re in a car, and Yuval expresses disappointment that one of his articles hasn’t gained much traction online. Basel chuckles in response, but not cruelly. He gently ribs his friend for his impatience and his desire to effect change immediately. It’s a war they’ve been fighting for decades, and change takes time, he reminds.
That gnaw between urgency and helplessness is familiar. How do you find the strength to stay calm when your blood is buzzing? How do you stay patient when children are being murdered by the hour? When an entire people are being erased daily?
There is also an invisible wall that stands between them—no one points to it or names it, but it’s there. Yuval visits often, sits with Basel’s family, shares meals and helps film the documentary. We’re led to believe that he spends a significant amount of time at Masafer Yatta. He gets to pretend momentarily that he is one of them, witnessing the brutality inflicted upon Basel’s people—that is, until he decides to go home.
The first time Yuval says he’s leaving, Basel nods. The second time, Basel says nothing. That day, he’d just witnessed another fresh demolition and barely escaped a brutal attack by the Israeli military. And now Yuval reminds him, without meaning to, of the freedom he has that Basel does not.
But can we really blame him? Yuval, I mean. Because don’t we do the same? We show up for Palestinians when we have the mental bandwidth to do so. Donate when we feel generous. We care when we choose to, and step away when it’s too much. In this way, Yuval becomes a mirror to us. It’s uncomfortable and he knows it. But in knowing it, he does the only thing he can: which is to leave. Basel returns to his lonesome. This time, he is truly alone—and we feel it.
Again and again, we see homes collapse like a house of cards, as if their walls hadn’t once witnessed the pain, laughter, and dreams of a family. As the walls fall, we hear screaming, begging, and clenched fists instead. When the soldiers leave, the dust settles, and the villagers are left to pick up the pieces of what’s left.
Basel and Yuval are vulnerable with one another. We watch the crew interview a mother whose son had just been paralysed by a bullet while defending the family’s generators. Then we’re thrown back into the dust once again. The soldiers return, and another demolition occurs. A few days later, it’s settlers instead, evicting Palestinians with AR-15s slung across their shoulders.
It’s draining, and painfully so, to witness the villagers suffer over and over again. But that’s the point of the film—it’s not meant to entertain or move the viewers through a neat arc. It’s an authentic documentation of life under occupation. It’s meant to trap you in the loop and make you feel how endless it all is. The film's 95-minute runtime feels double that. You’re forced to live inside it, whether you like it or not.
A mother stares out from the mouth of a cave at the land before her. A black balloon drifts towards the clear sky. A boy stands on the rubble that was someone's home. Here and there, No Other Land gives us moments to breathe with extraordinary shots. But they’re not hopeful, it’s just what the truth looks like.
From a filmmaking perspective, it’s use of first-person perspective is vital—not only because it draws the audience emotionally closer to the events of the documentary—the helplessness, the frustration, the suffering—but because it is the only authentic way to portray life under occupation.
The camera often lowers to the children and locks us into their viewpoint of the demolition of Masafer Yatta. Through their eyes, we get the sense that the formative memories they are currently experiencing mirror those Basel described from his own childhood.
In this sense, the children become a bridge between the what-will-be to the past, serving as proof of the suffering Palestinians have endured for decades. It goes back to Basel’s father, his father before him, and so forth.
But it is not just trauma that is inherited—it’s the sense of duty that bleeds from father to son. In the early 2000s, Basel’s parents managed to build a school in the village against all odds. Later, they secured a visit from Tony Blair, which prevented the school from being marked for demolition for years.
It's things like this that cause Basel to fear the weight of this responsibility—both his father’s activist stamina and his own obligation to continue telling the story of his community’s erasure. He fears bringing a child into a world that so deeply detests his existence.
And yet, years later, at the Oscars, we watch him stand tall, accepting the award for Best Documentary. And during that speech, we learn Basel has a daughter now. Two months old.
It’s this, right here, that makes No Other Land so gripping and hollowing. It exists beyond the silver screen. The lives of those we see on screen are unfolding as we speak. Against every fear and doubt, Basel managed to succeed in sharing his story at the biggest stage. He’s even brought life into a world that tried to erase him. Basel—and the film, by extension—embodies the enduring spirit of the Palestinians.
But exposure comes with a cost. Hamdan Ballal, the film’s co-director—the man who stood behind Basel and Yuval during their Oscar acceptance speech—was attacked the same month by 15 Israeli settlers armed with knives, batons, and a rifle. He was assaulted on his own doorstep, sustaining injuries to his head and stomach, before being forcibly detained by Israeli forces.
It took a global campaign, initiated by his fellow co-directors of No Other Land, to secure his release. By the time he was freed, his shirt was soaked in blood and he could hardly walk. But the attack wasn’t just an attack on Ballal, it was an assault on creative freedom and the integrity of artistic expression. Knowing this gives the film another weight. You watch, knowing these people risked everything to make it.
Then there’s the issue of the film's distribution. Even after winning an Oscar, the documentary is still unable to secure major distribution in the United States. Even in Singapore, where distribution rights remain unclear, screening was hard to find. I watched it in an industrial area—courtesy of The Arts and Civil Space—in a room no bigger than a classroom. A projector screen was rolled down. Ninety people sat shoulder to shoulder. In that moment, the simple act of watching No Other Land felt like a form of resistance.
The IOF.
Remind yourself—if you ever get the chance to watch it—that this is not history. This is the present. Now. This is happening. As you sit comfortably—whether in a cinema, at home, or in a crowded room of an industrial building—the people on screen are still living what you’re only watching, if not worse.
And they’ll be living it long after you leave.
No Other Land is now streaming online.
