No Other Land (2024)
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No Other Land Movie Review
No Other Land is a 2024 Palestinian documentary film directed by Basel Adra. It’s a flawed, but impassionate and important doc.
This film shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval. First off, I have to say that this is one of the most important movies of the year due to its subject alone. What is currently happening in Gaza is much worse than what is going on in Ukraine. It is a black-and-white situation for once, one that is made even worse by the West’s open support for Israel, which is effectively committing genocide.
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With that out of the way, how does the movie fare on its own terms? Pretty good, I have to say. I preferred this film over ’20 Days in Mariupol’ because this one doesn’t have that annoying narration plastered over every scene. What it does have instead is a very moving and beautiful friendship that develops between these two activists, one from Palestine and the other from Israel. By showing an Israeli who is actually on the good side of history, the film may be too optimistic, but it worked on me and it gave me hope for this region, no matter how fleeting that hope might feel.
No Other Land is at its best when focusing on the relationship between the two as they clearly care for each other and their safety. It is at its weakest when focusing on the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers because this is where the movie shows its technical limitations as those scenes were so weakly shot and disorganized. But that also lent the movie the sort of authenticity that was perhaps needed to convey the immediacy and horror of this conflict.
Despite being filmed over many years and with constant limitations and outside pressures, the movie ended up being mostly professional with pretty good editing, a mostly organized structure and a couple of sequences of families being relocated that will most definitely touch anybody watching the film. The ending is particularly harrowing as it depicts the horrific plans of the Israelis regarding the country. It made me angry, which it was supposed to do.
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No Other Land is one of the most important movies of the year as it details the horrific events going into the even more atrocious conflict that is now happening in Gaza. The movie is technically limited due to obvious reasons and not always effective, but it was surprisingly well edited while featuring a truly harrowing ending. The highlight is the central friendship between a Palestinian and Israeli soldier that gives viewers hope for the future, no matter how fleeting that hope might be. This is the type of movie that needs to be seen for the subject alone as the entire world is shamelessly turning the blind eye on what is effectively a genocide.
My Rating – 4
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