When word reached Masafer Yatta that “No Other Land” had won best documentary feature at the Academy Awards, it was four in the morning in the West Bank, and the news broke over breakfast during pre-sunrise suhoor. Fatma, a social worker in Hebron Hills, recalled shock and amazement among the Palestinian community.

“This film is visceral, not like when you watch TV or news channels. It details life to people watching so they know what happened,” said Fatma, the co-founder of Rural Women’s Association an organization providing counseling to families experiencing hardship, abuse, or displacement. As a witness and potential victim to rising settler violence, Fatma’s last name is omitted for her protection.

“No Other Land” is a documentary film by four directors: Palestinians Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, and Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. It records the destruction, demolition, and displacement unfolding in Masafer Yatta from 2018 to 2023. The Oscar win comes at a crucial time for the communities it covers, but despite the accolades and new attention to the film, it still hasn’t secured a large U.S. distributor. 

This year marks the largest displacement in the West Bank since 1967, as a result of the Israeli military operation “Iron Wall,” which began in late January and swiftly displaced 40,000 Palestinians. Last year saw 1,768 demolitions in the West Bank, marking the highest annual count since the United Nations started tracking in 2009.

“We got the Oscar, but the settler violence has become more and more in my community. The last attack was just a few minutes before [today’s] iftar,” said Ballal, who was also one of the film’s photographers. 

When “No Other Land” premiered in Masafer Yatta last year, hundreds of people—Fatma estimated around 500—came out to see the film, which was projected onto an oversized screen next to a playground in the park. 

Despite its accolades and an Oscar nomination, the film couldn’t a large U.S. distributor. “Union,” an Oscar short-listed documentary following Amazon labor unions, faced a similar scenario. However, both films went on to glean record box office numbers. 

It was a different story for “20 Days in Mariupol,” the 2024 Oscar winner for best documentary that followed Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged Ukrainian city during the brutal Russian invasion. PBS Distribution acquired the rights, and it was immediately available on the PBS website, YouTube, and Amazon Prime. It was even screened at the start of the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly. However, American audiences are still unable to stream “No Other Land” on any platform.

After settling on self-distribution, the film has spread like wildfire in arthouse theaters and independent cinemas. As of March, “No Other Land” has grossed nearly $420,000, outperforming the four other contestants for best documentary.

Despite its international acclaim, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) released an official statement last week calling to boycott the film. One reason listed is the film’s collaboration with Close-Up, a documentary initiative that hundreds of Arab filmmakers denounced for attempting to “force the Zionist entity into the heart of the cultural and cinematic landscape of the Arab region.” Such a goal breaks with the BDS movement’s anti-normalization rules. 

“It is important to recognize that Palestinians do not need validation, legitimation or permission from Israelis to narrate our history, our present, our experiences, our dreams, and our resistance, including artistic resistance, to the colonial system of oppression that denies us our freedom and inalienable rights,” the statement read.

Abraham, one of the co-directors, is from Beersheba, a major site of conquest during the 1948 Nakba, when the town’s demography flipped from majority Arab to majority Jewish within just two months, displacing an estimated 30,000 Palestinians. 

“There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people,” Abraham said in his Oscars speech in front of a sea of American A-listers. “And I have to say, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined?”

Abraham’s acceptance speech went viral after the Oscars. One particular line, “When I look at Basel, I see my brother,” evokes a harrowing encounter two weeks prior on Miami Beach, when a Jewish man shot at two Israeli tourists 17 times, mistaking them for Palestinians. Both Israeli men survived. The next day, one of them posted “Death to Arabs” on his social media.

“It is deeply ironic and telling that both the alleged pro-Israel perpetrator and the pro-Israel victim in the Miami Beach shooting hold racist anti-Palestinian views,” said Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), on X.

Just days before the Oscar win, Florida Rep. Brian Mast wrote in a staff memo that all “formal correspondence, communication, and documentation” would refer to the territory of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.”

South Florida is a hot spot for anti-Palestinian politics, from Palm Beach County, the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds, to Miami Beach, where pro-Palestinian art is vulnerable to censorship.

Miami is one of only dozens of cities that have been screening “No Other Land.” After selling out the first week of showings, O Cinema scheduled an additional two days. The theater received encouragement from local resident Alice Nasser before penciling it in.   

Nasser was compelled to find a way for “No Other Land” to reach people in Miami. She first watched the documentary during a trip to New York City, where it was screening at Film Forum. Nasser started cold-emailing several small theaters around Miami. Out of five institutions, only O Cinema responded with a yes. A week after the Oscars, Coral Gables Cinema scheduled the film for four screenings a week.

“I feel like the power dynamics and the tension at play, there is so much in this film that you come out of it realizing what your responsibility is,” Nasser said. “It was the least I could do, for me to send an email.”

In her outreach to theaters, Nasser stressed the documentary’s importance and its exposure of the cruel reality of occupation.

“This movie is impossible to ignore,” Nasser said. “It’s just such a harsh reality and the way that everyone involved is just trying to live a life. They want to have a family, they want to go to school, they want to be able to drive, and they can’t. They can’t because at every turn there is someone trying to dehumanize and block that.”

On March 5, three days before “No Other Land” was set to premiere to a sold-out show at O Cinema, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner called on the independent theater to remove the film. In a letter that twice mentions the theater’s position on publicly owned land, Meiner called the film “hateful propaganda.” 

On March 11, Meiner filed a resolution to rescind O Cinema’s lease for continuing to screen the film despite his objections. In an emailed newsletter, the Mayor said that he has “watched the film” and describes it as antisemitic and a “false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of [the] City and residents.” The resolution is slated for the City Commission meeting on March 19.

While O Cinema continues to screen the film, they open each screening with a statement to the audience clarifying that the choice is as part of the theater’s mission to highlight voices that bring about dialogue in the Miami community, rather than a “declaration of political alignment.”

In October, Netflix removed 19 films from a collection called “Palestinian Stories” that was launched in 2021. When activists protested, calling for the films to be restored, the company responded that the films’ removal from the platform was because their licenses expired. However, another 13 films in the collection were also eventually removed, leaving just one.

As representation of Palestinian narratives decreases across media platforms, anti-Palestinian hate is increasing. CAIR published a study last June revealing a spike in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate in the U.S. CAIR documented 4,951 incoming complaints from January to June 2024 alone, a 69% increase over the same period in 2023—pre-Oct. 7, 2023. 

“It’s important for us that American people watch it, that Congress watch our movie, to understand what we are facing from the settler violence and the demolition of our communities,” Ballal said. “I think the people who support us can pressure the government to make a decision to protect Palestinian people.”

Editorial Team:
Alexandra Martinez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor