No Other Land – Films – Visions du Réel

Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal & Rachel Szor
Palestine, Norway | 2024 | 96 min
Swiss Premiere
Languages : Arabic, Hebrew, English
Subtitles : English, French

Prix du Public offered by Ville de Nyon

Awarded Best Documentary at Berlinale 2024, No Other Land was made by a collective of four Palestinian-Israeli activists. While Basel records the occupation and destruction of his village in the West Bank, he is joined by Yuval, a young Israeli activist. Between mistrust, anger and camaraderie, an impossible alliance is born, and a heart-rending film that opens up both wounds and dialogue.

Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham are enemies – at least on paper. And yet, in February, they came together onstage at the Berlinale to receive their awards (Best Documentary, Audience Award), deliver speeches, proclaim their friendship and the possibility of their collaboration to the world, and thus attempt to send a message of hope and peace. Immediately after their speeches, however, they began to receive death threats. No Other Land, co-directed with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, is nevertheless a demonstration that dialogue is possible. Between the extreme urgency of scenes of evacuation and destruction riskily recorded on a mobile phone, it is the silences and gazes that the film chooses to underscore. Because there is often nothing else to say. Hookah smoke fills the screen, sublimating the boundless human intelligence of this film. Knowing how to remain silent, leaving if you can, or when you have to, remaining humble in the face of such duality: while one bubbles with the imperious anger of militancy, the other embodies the oppression and struggle of generations.
Anne Delseth

Yuval Abraham
No Other Land, 2024

Basel Adra
No Other Land, 2024

Hamdan Ballal
No Other Land, 2024

Rachel Szor
No Other Land, 2024