They've made us strangers in our on own home
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2024
#41 : No Other Land
Account of an Israeli and a Palestinian’s remarkable relationship across the divide, after they met when Palestinian villages were bulldozed to make way for the Israeli military.
Skipping over the deliciously lunatic Hundreds Of Beavers (#42) brings us to a film with a slightly more serious subject matter - I have heard about this because it's been in the news recently but I'm not expecting it to feature too many giggles.
The film follows Basel Adra and his friends and family as the Israelis demolish several villages on the West Bank. During this time, we also meet Yuval Abraham, who is an Israeli who believes what's going on isn't right and between them they attempt to document and publicise what's going on as much as they can - part of which is obviously this film.
And their film pretty much consists of people sitting around talking whilst looking bored or depressed, desperately scrabbling to remove all their worldly goods from a house before it gets knocked down, standing around watching their house get knocked down or attempting to live a normal life despite having all their stuff either outside or in a cave. So there's an argument that not an awful lot happens, but it feels quite an important not an awful lot of stuff and it happens over the period of a couple of years, so there's quite a lot of not an awful lot!
I'm not going to discuss the politics of the situation because there's nothing to be gained by doing so but, in my opinion, the film is reasonably dispassionate - offering few opinions but instead using the camera to document what happens (and yes - I know this can be faked, but I didn't get the impression anything like that happened here). Yes, there's an argument that it's one-sided but I imagine the Israeli soldiers and bulldozer drivers weren't going to offer their opinions up anyway (the bulldozer drivers are generally pretty busy people - and, to their credit, the soldiers aren't probably could be).
Given the conditions under which filming takes place, the quality of the film is remarkable - people are often very well lit, the sound quality is good and when there is action to be shot, the filmmakers keep up with it well. I've absolutely no idea how they managed it all, but it's an impressive piece of work.
And it has been well received critically, winning stacks of awards including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film - but I think it's fair to say that not everyone appreciated the increased publicity for the film. Including, bizarrely, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (whoever they are) who complained that people in the film attempted to interact with Israelis (mostly, I'm assuming, Yuval) - I guess we'll just say that everyone has their own take on matters. However, the increased publicity hasn't resulted in increased audiences - several countries (including the US) won't touch it with a barge pole.
This is definitely an admirable rather than enjoyable film - it did educate me, although I'm certainly not about to claim I'm an expert on the situation because that would never end well (and nor should it). I would say, however (and this is as political as I'm going to get) that recent events haven't done anything to make me suggest that the film is inaccurate. It's an odd one in terms of recommendations because, in some ways it feels like it's essential viewing and, in other ways it feels like "what's the point?" (which unfortunately is somewhat the way of the world at the minute). If you want to watch this in the US then you are, as they say, "shit out of luck" but in the UK you can rent it on several platforms, but no-one has been brave enough to stream it yet.
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