No Other Land

The Akademie der Künste is showing the film No Other Land on 12 November. The screening of the film will be followed by a talk with the filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra. 

No Other Land will be released in German cinemas on 14 November 2024. The film had its world premiere in February 2024 in the Panorama section of the 2024 Berlinale, and won the festival’s Berlinale Documentary Award and the Panorama Audience Award. 

One of the jury members at the Berlinale was the recently deceased director Thomas Heise (1955–2024), then director of the Film and Media Arts section of the Akademie der Künste. The screening goes back to his wish to place the film itself rather than the political statements of the two directors on the Middle East conflict at the centre of debate during the Berlinale awards decision. The background to this was the disputed choice of words on the unequal treatment of Israelis and Palestinians as a result of the settlement policy in the West Bank and the developments in the Gaza war following the brutal attack on Israel by Hamas. 

Heise took a different view of the Berlinale event, which was scandalized as antisemitic by politicians and in particular the press: “I didn’t think so. However, I must respect the fact that some people found it intolerable. Then the media jumped in with its heightened sensationalism and turned polite clapping during pauses in the speech into “frenetic applause in response to anti-Israeli slurs”, and what was said was called antisemitic. But that wasn’t the case. Who’s going to say “I was wrong”? No Other Land – let’s talk about the film.”

For Thomas Heise, it was important to talk about the ethos of the medium that shaped his life: “Bearing witness, and doing so responsibly and accurately is the very basis of every documentary.”

Film synopsis: In their film, Palestinian lawyer and activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham document the repeated destruction of Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, over a period of five years. Basel Adra’s family and the residents of the region have been resisting the planned resettlement for many years after Israel declared their land a restricted military area. In front of the camera, the filmmakers reflect on their thoughts and feelings, the complex situation and their respective roles as Palestinians and Israelis experiencing the conflict from unequal sides. “It should not be overseen that at the centre of the film is the friendship between the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers,” said filmmaker and former president of the Akademie der Künste Jeanine Meerapfel immediately after the Berlinale award ceremony.

Welcome:
Anh-Linh Ngo, Vice-President of the Akademie der Künste

Filmmakers (participating remotely):
Basel Adra, lawyer, activist, journalist and filmmaker from Masafer Yatta, who has been fighting against the eviction of his community for 15 years
Yuval Abraham, Israeli filmmaker and investigative journalist from Jerusalem

Moderation of film talk:
Hanno Hauenstein, freelance journalist and author with a focus on art, culture and politics. He reported regularly from Israel-Palestine between 2011 and 2016.

No Other Land, documentary film by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abra and Rachel Szor, Palestinian-Norwegian co-production, 2024, 96 min. Original version in Arabic, Hebrew and English with English subtitles