Friday, March 7, 2025: Let's go to The Rialto Theater in Sebastopol on Tuesday the 11th of March and watch this important documentary about Palestine together! 

No Other Land is a 2024 documentary film directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor in their directorial debut. The film was made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four activists in what they describe as an act of resistance on the path to justice during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

I received a call from Alice who wants to go on Tuesday to the theater. Please check the Rialto Theater using ther link below. Tickets for seniors are $13.75.

A co-production between Palestine and Norway, the film was selected for the Panorama section at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 16 February 2024, winning the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film, and the Berlinale Documentary Film Award. The film won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

Story:

A young Palestinian activist named Basel Adra has been resisting the forced displacement of his people by Israel's military in Masafer Yatta, a region in the occupied West Bank, since he was a child. He records the gradual destruction of his homeland, where Israeli soldiers are tearing down homes and evicting their inhabitants in order to enforce a court order maintaining that the area has been legally designated as a military firing zone. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families – the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank…

He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. 

This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.

Production

In an interview at the Berlinale, Adra and Abraham spoke with Variety about the film.

Basel Adra spoke about development of the film. He said, "Yuval and Rachel, who are Israelis, came five years ago to write about things — Yuval is journalist — we met and we became friends but also activists together, working on articles about the area." He further said, "And then we got the idea of doing this, of creating this movie."

About filming Abraham said:

Basal’s [sic] family and neighbors had a huge archive of videos that were filmed over the course of 20 years. And then we as activists, we were there on the ground together, working together for almost five years, and we filmed a lot. We had Rachel, the cinematographer and co-director of the film, who was shooting us. So there was an abundance of footage.

The military entered Basal’s [sic] home twice and confiscated computers and cameras. So we were always very, very stressed. It was complicated logistically and quite stressful, but in the end we managed.

The documentary was filmed over four years between 2019 and 2023, wrapping production in October 2023. Check out all the information for the Rialto Theater using this link:

https://rialtocinemas.com/now-playing/no-other-land-seb/