No Other Land ★★★★

Availability: Showing in a limited number of theaters and cities nationally, because no U.S. distributor has picked it up; available more widely internationally. There are no suggestions of when it will be available streaming. As one site put it, “it’s virtually impossible to watch ‘No Other Land’ (at least legally).”

There’s Always Tomorrow

Four young adults—two Israeli, two Palestinian—improbably came together to produce this extraordinary documentary that won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The four filmed, directed, and edited 92 minutes of raw, tense—and intense—footage of West Bank Palestinians desperately trying to stay on land that had been theirs for more than a century.

Yuval Abraham, left, questioned about his bona fides for being in the Palestinian villages says, "I'm Jewish." His colleague, Basel Adra, center, vouches for him, "He's a journalist."

Filming ended in October 2023, the month Hamas fighters came in from Gaza to perpetrate unspeakable crimes against hundreds of Israeli civilians. Although the devastation Israel subsequently wreaked on Gaza’s Palestinians cannot be far from any viewer’s mind, this is not that story.

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...a compelling, personal perspective on Israel’s determination to raze the villages and drive out the inhabitants of Masafer Yatta.

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Described as an activist collective, the four filmmakers—Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor—decided in 2018 to craft a documentary, using as their starting point an archive of videos from Basel’s family and neighbors filmed over the past 20 years, the lifetimes of these self-described journalists. The result is a compelling, personal perspective on Israel’s determination to raze the villages and drive out the inhabitants of Masafer Yatta, a hilly, rocky, rural region in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The reason the Israeli military gave for their campaign was that the land was needed for a “military training ground.” The encroaching Israeli settlements—neat, orderly developments that contrast with the makeshift homes of the Palestinians—give the lie to that.

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One of the oddest “buddy” narratives you’ll see.

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Although the film presents the rationale for the military’s campaign of destruction and briefly shows a 20-year legal effort by the Palestinians to stay on their land, it is essentially the personal story of Palestinian Basel and Israeli Yuval, one of the oddest “buddy” narratives you’ll see. The friendship develops over the 2018 to 2023 period, with (what seem like) casual chats, at once intimate and somewhat distanced, between the two protagonists. The difference between them—joined in their effort to publicize the West Bank residents’ plight—is stark. Yuval is physically free; he can drive his car to and from Israel and the West Bank, and he returns to his home in Israel every night. His car has yellow license plates. He is a “yellow man.” The vehicles of Basel and his neighbors are not allowed to enter Israel and many are inexplicably confiscated (though his father operates what passes for a gas station). They bear green plates. The Palestinians are the confined “green men.”

In these five years, Basel experiences emotional highs and lows, as do the residents of Masafer Yatta. In 2018 Basel confidently asserts they will succeed in keeping their land. As the years wear on, he becomes at times despondent at the prospects, wonders if he wants to be an activist like his many-times-imprisoned father (who is imprisoned during the filming), and often views Yuval as naïve. “You’re enthusiastic,” he says to his friend, explaining that Yuval thinks the situation will be resolved in 10 minutes, by a published article or a few Facebook posts. After Tony Blair comes to visit, staying for 7 minutes, a school is built and Basel is momentarily positive: “look what power can do.”

The bulldozer becomes a principal vehicle of, and symbol of, terror.

The film builds tension from the first scene, showing real-time confrontations with the Israeli military and video of bulldozers destroying the villagers’ homes—and later, the recently-built school. Arriving with armed troops, the bulldozer becomes a principal vehicle of, and symbol of, terror, as the villagers never know which village will be selected for destruction. The Palestinians are fearless in physically standing up to the Israeli military, who are presented mostly anonymously. Though rigid and impersonal, the soldiers must have had orders not to shoot, although one young man is paralyzed by a shot early on, and we follow his fate through his mother’s anguish.

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This documentary takes a lesson from Frederick Wiseman, the father of unfiltered (though heavily edited) documentaries.

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This documentary takes a lesson from Frederick Wiseman, the father of unfiltered (though heavily edited) documentaries—the late-1960s “Titicut Follies” and “High School” among them. There are no voice-overs or talking heads, no visual or oral commentary explaining what is going on. Although edited in a cave (some villagers are forced to live in caves when their homes are demolished), it’s clear that considerable care went into this narrative we describe as tense and intense.

“No Other Land”—the title taken from a Palestinian woman who asks the soldier destroying her home “where am I to go? I have no other land”—has been criticized for being one-sided and, for that reason, it has failed to find a US distributor. It’s the Palestinians’ story. We see them making a home however they can, chatting, eating, laughing, playing games, enjoying each others’ company. Other than Yuval,  the Israelis are framed as gun-toting, sometimes masked, hostile soldiers or, from a distance, armed settlers who beat up and shoot at the Palestinians.

To the charge of being one-sided, the filmmakers would plead guilty. That makes them no different from hundreds of other documentarians, stretching back to Wiseman, who produced films with a cause, from “The Thin Blue Line” (1998) to “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006). In many ways, the four activist-directors are remarkably restrained. They avoid overt discussion of politics or religion, an elision which makes Basel’s and Yuval’s story all the more personal, relatable, and indelible.

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She says: I’m reluctant as a film reviewer to say “you must see this,” but as a fellow film-goer, I say “you must see this.”

He says: Sometimes there is no “other” side.

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Date: 2025 (for limited US showings)

Directors: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor

Starring: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham

Country: Palestine and Norway

Languages: Arabic and Hebrew, subtitled in English, and English

Runtime: 92 minutes

Oscar Nominations: Winner, Best Documentary Feature

Other Awards: 69 wins and 31 other nominations