‘No Other Land’ Is Powerful Docu-Film
Oscar winner about Israel and Palestine faces censorship, fear of Trump attacks, but showing at the Downer.
No Other Land. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Film.
The documentary is a powerful Oscar winner and a scream for justice.
It uses a cinema verite camera, sometimes blurred and jerky, 20 years of home footage matched with professional footage and tight editing for the years 2019-2023 and melancholy hookah-smoked discussions between a Palestinian and Israeli activist about whether anyone in the public will listen.
It shows lovingly built, mud-brick homes with adorable children being razed by brutal military machines and face-swaddled squads of soldiers (who this time happen to be Israeli), claiming all this rock-infested neighborhood territory as the new home for Israeli tank training.
The squads shrug off the cries of anger from Masafer Yatta villagers as thousands of West Bank residents either flee or take refuge in crowded caves, where eerie strips of TV screens and cell phones surround their makeshift beds and fire cans.
Strangely, as fascinating as the video images are in No Other Land (a title deliberately borrowed from a famous Israeli song) it is the tumult of social arguments around the movie that are now the bigger and even more important story.
While previous winners of the best Oscar documentary each year have had little trouble finding movie exhibitors to clamor aboard – in films about Anne Frank, Columbine, Muhammad Ali, Al Gore’s warnings about climate change and several films involving the Holocaust – this one is only being shown at staggered times in Milwaukee through March at the Downer Theatre because of the commitment of the Milwaukee Film Festival.
Meanwhile, the film is advertised for TV streaming – but only if you live in other countries like the United Kingdom.
The Israeli-Palestinian issue has torn the American commitment to free speech apart and there are both historic and current reasons for this. The documentary has landed in the middle of the dispute — and now plays a big part in it.
Many speculate that the reluctance of film exhibitors and US streaming services to show the film reflect the “Trump will attack you” issue, since his administration has clearly chilled corporate resistance and freely attacks anyone who supports Palestine as a supporter of the Hamas massacre of 2024 (though this film was made before that).
Some observers relate the No Other Land plea for Palestine equality to the current Trump effort to deport green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who in negotiations at Columbia University argued that a change in the government of Israel would represent liberation for Palestinians and Jews alike. The film actually argues the same without even mentioning how Israel had its own reasons for giving money to Hamas.
There are potent long-term reasons to support Israel no matter what. Including for me, dating back to when I was a 6-year-old living in New York City who cared for comic books, but nothing about politics. Except that my parents had come there from Europe to flee Hitler. My earliest childhood memories are of the European victims of the Holocaust coming to our apartment for family dinners and the household glee that erupted in 1948 when President Truman immediately recognized Israel as a Jewish state.
Over the next decades the fever of support for Israel was a dominant emotion for many Americans, especially in light of the hatred and constant wars led by Arab states against Israel. Many felt and perhaps still feel that the suffering the Jews endured for centuries justify the military might Israel uses today, even to resist a two-state solution.
Younger Americans, however, began switching in the 1990s to more sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. But then came the Hamas massacre of 2024 – just as No Other Land was hitting European festivals with its plea for academic divesture from and less military aid for Israel.
The movie was made by a team of Israelis and Palestinians (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor) with the friendship of Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval playing lead roles, as they did in moving speeches at the March Oscars.
The veiled faces and everyday details of family life, optimism despite hardships, are the memorable parts of the film, though it is more visually than intellectually fulfilling, given that it is an unabashed polemic for the political desperation of the film-makers to be heard and heeded. I don’t like labeling anything the best documentary of 2024, but I have no doubt it is an important voice, and all the more important given the resistance it faces to be heard.
Its difficulties of finding an American audience at this particular time casts a gloomy shade over the freedom of ideas America once represented.
Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.
If you think stories like this are important, become a member of Urban Milwaukee and help support real, independent journalism. Plus you get some cool added benefits.
Movies
-
Dylan Biopic ‘A Compete Unknown’ Is Lovable Mythology
Feb 9th, 2025 by Dominique Paul Noth
-
‘Emilia Perez’ Is a Must See
Feb 2nd, 2025 by Dominique Paul Noth
-
‘Maria’ Is a Star Vehicle For Angelina Jolie
Dec 29th, 2024 by Dominique Paul Noth
Review
-
Movida Offers Lovely $25 Brunch
Mar 16th, 2025 by Cari Taylor-Carlson
-
La Finca Serves More Than Coffee
Mar 11th, 2025 by Cari Taylor-Carlson
-
Rep’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Has a Country Twang
Mar 2nd, 2025 by Dominique Paul Noth
As a Milwaukee-born and raised Catholic (including honorable service as an altar boy), I saw “No Other Land” in New York City where I have lived my adult life. We went on a Sunday afternoon, assuming that there would be a handful of people in the audience. Instead, there was barely a seat to be had. During the film, there was none of the usual food crunching or side conversations. When it ended, no one moved, and after the credits ended and people were filing out, no one was talking and there wasn’t a smile to be seen. I have no idea what the religious mix of the audience was, but I suspect there weren’t a lot of former altar boys.
In another documentary, “The Gatekeepers,” former heads of the Israeli Mossad, the group responsible for maintaining control of the West Bank are interviewed. At the end of the film, one is asked, “How has this changed Israel?” His response: “We have become cruel.”
I think there are messages in “No Other Land” that go well beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Becoming a cruel people is hardly limited to Israelis. Two other big messages that have application well beyond Israel and Palestine. The first is that once you have defined yourself as a victim, there are no constraints on what you can do to “the others.” You can justify anything. The tragedy in Israel is that there are two groups that define themselves as victims, and each can make a case. The danger in our country is that the far-right has gotten many white people to define themselves as victims, and to be able to justify anything.
The second big message is that you cannot dehumanize others without dehumanizing yourself. As cruelty and the death of empathy become entrenched in America, it is worth spending some time thinking about the lives of those – mostly younger people – who are carrying out the cruel orders of those who never get their hands dirty and are always flying at 30,000 feet cruising altitude. All on display in “No Other Land.”
I am also New York born (raised Catholic by a Jewish mother how coverted) and had no worry that No Other Land would be well received in that city. But except for New York and Los Angeles (where the movie industry congregates) there have been problems getting the film viewed in the hinterlands.