Interview: Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra on ‘No Other Land’ and Its Plea for Freedom

“I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian, and in two days we go back to a land where are not equal.” So said Yuval Abraham as part of an acceptance speech at this year’s Berlinale, where No Other Land won two awards, including the top documentary prize. Standing alongside Basel Adra, another of the four credited directors on the project, he continued: “This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, has to end.”

A clip of the speech quickly made the rounds in Israel’s media, with prominent outlets seizing on Abraham’s choice of the word “apartheid” to declare the speech antisemitic. Despite the death threats that he faced, the journalist and filmmaker stood by both the speech and the documentary. If their detractors thought that their criticism would bury No Other Land, they were sorely mistaken, as the hostility backfired. The film’s profile only grew from the controversy as it toured the global festival circuit throughout 2024, though it notably remains without a distributor ahead of its week-long run at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center.

Yet it’s images, not words, that give No Other Land such undeniable power. Abraham and Adra, along with fellow co-directors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, unflinchingly train their lens on scenes of horror and humanity occurring within an occupied community in the West Bank. With immediacy and intimacy, the film captures several years in Adra’s home of Masafer Yatta as his fellow villagers fight against their forced displacement at the hands of the Israeli military. From this atrocity grows a tenacious activism, one modeled in the documentary’s own making by an Israeli-Palestinian filmmaking collective committed to a future defined by equality and justice.

I spoke with Abraham and Adra when the two co-directors were in town to present No Other Land at the New York Film Festival—a trip cut tragically short by their need to get home in the wake of escalating tension between Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran. Our conversation covered how their friendship came to be such an integral component of the documentary’s narrative, why it was important to ensure the edit captured more than just violence in Masafer Yatta, and what making the documentary taught them about the nature of power.

Basel, from early on we know your history with image making and how it was tied to your parents’ activism. How do you think about the camera as a tool now?

Basel Adra: It’s still important. I understand that people are talking about [how] there are so many images and they’re shown so much footage [in the world], and it’s not easy for us to shoot this. But I think we should not give up on documenting it. I keep up the hope that one day there will be consequences and those who commit crimes will pay the price through their documentation in the photos.

At what point in making No Other Land did you realize that your friendship would be as much the subject of the film as the events that you were capturing?

Yuval Abraham: The relationship between me and Basel, and the friendship that developed over the years, shows the power imbalance that exists between Palestinians and Israelis. It was such a fundamental characteristic of working on the film together. We had to edit it in a cave in Masafer Yatta, basically, just for the main reason that Basel cannot leave the occupied West Bank. There’s a moment in the film when we speak about the license plates—I, as an Israeli, have a yellow license plate. Basel has a green license plate, and the green cars can only stay in the West Bank because they live under military control, and that was important for us.

But we also felt this layer of reflection. There were a lot of conversations between us about the film, thinking about what we’re doing in co-resistance and about the future, that gave a certain tone to the film. They can also balance the very difficult and intense moments of violence that are seen, like the house demolitions and whatnot. Honestly, it’s a reflection of our collective as well. We’re a collective of Palestinians and Israelis who are opposed to the military occupation and are calling for a political change that will ensure mutual security, freedom, and justice for both people. That is, in our minds, reliant on achieving a political solution. Instead of just saying that as a statement—which I said right now, and it’s probably not a very interesting statement—it’s more interesting to explore with images and in a much more intimate way in the film.

Is embodying that future of Israeli and Palestinian coexistence a feature you realized you wanted to model from an early point in making the film?

YA: Firstly, we wanted to show the reality of the military occupation. That was the primary goal of making the film, and the Masafer Yatta communities are still being destroyed as we speak. But throughout working, especially looking at the material and thinking about what was more interesting, we discovered those additional layers.

You’re involved in citizen journalism through social media. Did you envision No Other Land as an outgrowth of those dispatches, or something else entirely?

BA: All these years I’ve used the camera to follow and document events, I was always thinking about [putting] people in a position to know and understand what’s happening. Using social media has the same goal for me. People should know and hear about us. They should know that Masafer Yatta is an area that exists and the kind of life that we’re living. That is part of why the support goes from here to Israel and how, in the doc, it’s used against us. Using social media and making No Other Land, carrying the camera, and running after bulldozers, it’s really so people should understand—and so politicians should see what’s happening and take action.

The footage capturing the lived reality of Masafer Yatta is so immediate. What were the discussions around the level of context you wanted to provide rather than letting the images speak for themselves?

YA: We’re journalists, so when we began working on the film, the first cuts had a lot of context. But gradually after watching the film and sharing it with people, much of that fell [out], because at the end, we attempted to speak to much deeper layers of the human consequences of military occupation, the intimate complexities of working together, and what that looks like. We didn’t need a lot of context. When you look at a person’s face watching their own house being demolished, you understand a lot. I’m not sure you need at the beginning of the film to hear a narration that says Israel rejects 99% of the building permits that Palestinians ask for, and this is why their houses are being destroyed as part of the plan to increase settling in the area.

That context is important, and people can read about it online. But what they don’t know is the look in a mother’s eyes when she’s sitting with her son in a cave, and the son was shot because he held on to a generator, and they cannot build a normal house because the military will not give them a permit, and the son dies in the cave. You have to see them. You have to see the image. We realized that that was the power of what we were doing.

Where was the balance in depicting that level of tragedy without dwelling too heavily on the pain?

BA: We wanted to show all parts of life in the community: the violence and oppression that it’s facing from Israeli soldiers and settlers but also its traditions. Despite this bad and miserable situation that people are going through, life must continue. This is how the community is behaving, to be honest. They’re trying to find a life with weddings, parties, school graduations, and all the other stuff. We wanted to be able to feel the humanity of the people in Masafer Yatta. The violence goes on, but you can’t show that all the time. We wanted to show all things.

Is that something that informed how you shaped the final edit beyond organizing it chronologically? There are juxtapositions, such as following the military prison with a sequence of the community in celebration, which are quite striking.

YA: The film is often about contrasts, and you have to keep in mind not only the classic narrative of one event leading to another, which leads to another, which leads to an escalation. There’s also an emotional narrative, where we’re thinking about taking the audience on a journey. If all they feel is pain and violence, that is, as Basel said, not truthful to reality. It has far more emotions. We were intentional in the way we structured it so that there would be a rollercoaster of emotions in a way. On the one hand, there’s a repetitive nature in the film, and that was intentional as a representation of the circle of violence, the moments of silence, and happiness. It’s such an integral part of the community, and we wanted to let the audience feel that. But we aimed to make it with enough of a variety of emotion so that the viewer can finish the film feeling more than one thing, and can actually watch 90 minutes that have quite intense scenes.

How did you all capture that perfectly composed image of Basel lying down in the grass as a bulldozer passes by in the background? Did you recognize its power to define the film, as it does on the poster, at the time?

YA: It was Rachel [Szor, co-director and cinematographer]. She was filming it when you were lying there. Did you notice she was filming you when you were there?

BA: No. Those were the moments [after] my father was arrested in the night, and in the morning, they came to do demolition. It was a very long day, and I was really tired. I didn’t sleep all night. I woke up following [the arrival of] the bulldozer, and they didn’t stop. That was the longest day of demolition I ever can remember. I seriously couldn’t take more of filming the bulldozer moving and destroying tents, shelters, and homes. And then she filmed me.

YA: If you film a lot and work hard to film—Rachel, she’s an amazing cinematographer who spent hours and hours filming—you catch moments that reality scripts.

Narration in the film informs us, “This is a story about power.” How do you think about the origin of that power? Is it something that the Palestinian people have and need to feel empowered to use? Does it need to be cultivated and created?

BA: I think both, but for us today, it’s very hard to speak about power in moments like this. I feel really powerless. I feel very exhausted from what’s going on and with everything changing. But we shouldn’t give up, and to not give up, you need this power in order to continue. It’s exactly as we show in the positive images of the community, despite all the pressure it’s facing. Always you need to look for power, even if small, in order to continue living for it and to try and [increase] it. The power of this movie is really to show people the power that we want. We want to mobilize people to be on our side against what’s happening.

Your final conversation is striking because you’re talking about the future—getting married, starting a family. The context has changed following October 7, but how important is it to ensure your activism doesn’t lose sight of the joy that might await when everyone has equality?

YA: That was important. And I think the tricky thing about envisioning a political vision that’s centered around equality between Israelis and Palestinians, mutual security, and an end to the military occupation is that we can see the goal very clearly as we sit there in Masafer Yatta. But we’re struggling with how we can get there. What can we do? What action can we take in the world as activists, filmmakers, and journalists that will be part of that wave of political change and allow us to reach this destination that we agree on? One cannot think about the United States in that regard and the importance of showing this film here.

I personally believe, as an Israeli, that the United States [should] have changed its foreign policy toward Israel and Palestine a long time ago. But there are so many steps that the next administration can still take, starting with recognizing the Palestinian state, not vetoing the U.N. Security Council resolutions that are calling for a Palestinian state, and respecting international law. The International Court of Justice recently ruled the military occupation under which Basel lives is illegal, and the U.S. cannot continue to condone this and not apply sanctions. If you speak about power, the U.S. is the biggest power in the room. I think with power comes responsibility—it’s a cliché, but it’s true. Right now, I believe the U.S. is using its power in a way that’s extremely harmful, first and foremost, to Palestinians. But I think, in the long term, it’s also against the long-term interests of Israel. I hope that this film contributes to a conversation that might end up changing at least some of that in the future.

Have there been any discussions about reopening the edit to account for more events that have followed since the premiere?

YA: I think it wouldn’t have been truthful to what we’re doing because so much has changed over the past year. Our film ends after October 7 when so many Israeli civilians were killed and so many people in Gaza began to be killed. In Basel’s community, six entire Palestinian villages were depopulated by settler attacks and military violence. We mention that, but for us, it felt right that we reached this moment. That is another film.

What was the response to your screenings of the film in Masafer Yatta?

BA: It was a very emotional night. The community loved it so much, and they were happy to see the archive footage. They all talked about those moments because they had forgotten them from a very long time back. The community has really been supportive, from all the activism to winning the award [at the Berlin Film Festival].