If anything can be described as essential viewing, it’s this stark and unflinching account of life on the ground in a contested region of the West Bank. Directed by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli film-makers and journalists – Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor – No Other Land won best documentary at the Berlin film festival in a ceremony that subsequently drew charges of antisemitism and death threats against the film-makers. Their picture looks at the struggle of a community to stay on land farmed by generations of their families.
Born and raised in Masafer Yatta, a collection of small Palestinian hamlets in the mountainous south of the West Bank, Basel Adra has followed the family tradition of protest and activism. He documents the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the region by the Israeli army and posts the footage on social media. It’s through his grassroots attempt to raise awareness that he meets Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist opposed to the army’s brutal tactics who plans to report on the situation on the ground. The friendship that grows between the two is a splinter of hope in an otherwise increasingly bleak situation.
In UK and Irish cinemas now, and Australian cinemas from 21 November
