REVIEW: ‘No Other Land’ Is Vital

A restless fatigue settles over the formidable, vital documentary No Other Land (2025). Directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor in their directorial debut, the film, since its premiere, has garnered a tremendous amount of critical support, culminating in an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. However, since its premiere at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and countless other festival appearances, it remains without an official distributor. That alone is enough to inform you of how integral it is. If film is a medium that acts as a window to the soul and a tool for empathy, No Other Land highlights why.

There’s no watching No Other Land and walking away with anything other than stomach-churning anger. Of discontent and rage over the cruelties humanity is capable of. The documentary, created by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four activists, captures the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers. Shot over three years from 2019 through October 2023, the documentary holds us in a vice grip, directing our attention to the systemic degradation of a population. This didn’t happen overnight, and as we progress through the documentary, it becomes more and more shocking and miraculous that those who remain fighting can do so.

Basel Adra has long been inspired by his father, an activist who understood the importance of visibility. Basel holds on to the idea that visibility can save lives — save homes — and thus seeks to capture every injustice inflicted upon the people of Masafer Yatta. It’s a demoralizing prospect. The destruction is gradual and aches within our bones as we realize so much worse has come to pass. The little faces of children, as they watch their homes and schools be wrought to ruin, linger something fierce and profound. Their futures are hindered by haunting inhumanity.

Designated by the Israeli Supreme Court as a military training ground for tank exercises, we watch as Israeli soldiers evict and force the expulsion of nearly 1,800 Palestinians. Prioritizing tanks and firing zones over people, we watch in abject horror as these soldiers destroy their homes with cold detachment, if not outright hostility. The filmmakers capture this process with a critical observational eye. They stand back as the destruction happens and are further pulled from a world they feel so connected to.

No Other Land finds connection in the wreckage. 

However, despite the restraint shown in these moments of destruction, there are moments of heart-pounding tension when soldiers confront Adra, chased, and beaten. The handheld camera offers an up-close and personal look at the pain and suffering felt and the indomitable force of their oppressors. No Other Land is a grueling experience as we witness the active displacement of an entire region. However, the significance of the filmmaking is crucial.

In moments of respite that still harbor general unease, we watch as Basel and Yuval form an unexpected yet affirming bond. The two are working towards the same goal, hoping their documentation of these events will support their cause and resistance. But there’s a distinct difference to their plight. Basel is stuck on the outskirts, waiting for his home and his father’s gas station to be next in the firing line of destruction. Yuval can drive past the checkpoints and go home.

It’s a point of contention later in the film by the other Palestinian filmmaker as he wonders about Yuval’s commitment. It’s a fair concern critical to the film’s conversation. The friendship between Yuval and Basel is comforting in their moments of conversation and smoking, but that peace is hard-earned when two of them are constantly looking over their shoulder and a target of soldiers. Yuval wants a quick solution, while Basel remarks that this fight has already lasted a decade. As Basel says early in the film, “They destroy us slowly.” More poignant is his statement that “I started filming when we started to end.”

The footage captures the magnitude of destruction while keeping an eye on the land’s beauty and the occupant’s tethers to it. “They made us strangers in our own land” hits harder as we watch their homes reduced to rubble. As they lose loved ones or, in a particular enraging thread, a loved one is denied access to care despite being critically injured by an Israeli soldier.

“We have no other land. It’s why we suffer for it.”

It’s not just that the members of this region are denied basic rights to their homes; tools that could help them rebuild—such as generators—are also taken away. That’s why a school or playground being demolished is so exacting in its painful imagery. There lies a beacon of hope for children, an escape that no longer exists to shield them.

No Other Land ends on a note of desolate despair. The footage ends in October 2023, and there’s an impossible urgency inferred from it. We must open our eyes, develop empathy, and revitalize it. We can’t just accustom ourselves to the ghoulish depravity that humans are capable of — our very singular brand of evil. We must rise above and look for ways to amplify the voices of those torn from the land they’re born on, thrust into a storm of displacement and hostility.

Shot with powerful weight behind each frame, No Other Land (2025)  isn’t simply important and timely — it’s necessary. Pacing itself so that we see the tireless act of people trying to rebuild their lives from ruin and maintain a sturdy, impossible spirit, the film offers a definitive approach to resistance through filmmaking. Because how do you leave this film unchanged? How do you stop seeing the faces of those kids as they watch their school, their haven, torn from them? It seems impossible. But so, too, does the wreckage. It’s up to the viewer to reconcile that truth and to allow the film harbor to make sure the intent finds its mark.

No Other Land (2025) is now playing in theaters.

Palestine’s entry into the Academy Awards, No Other Land won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. It has yet to receive a US distributor.