You probably can’t watch the political documentary of the year

As Never Look Away, this year’s documentary about camerawoman Margaret Moth, reminds us, it wasn’t long ago that the main barrier to the world at large understanding the human cost of geopolitical atrocities was how hard it was to actually see them. Now, of course, it’s never been easier to access damning footage, but it’s the understanding that’s not catching up. Social media is flooded with on-the-ground videos observing the death and destruction coming out of the occupied Palestinian territories, but they’re easier to ignore—to just scroll past—than a more cohesive and pointed piece of nonfiction. And yet, the main barrier for No Other Land, the harrowing first-person account documenting five years of home demolitions and forced displacement in Masafer Yatta, is once again how hard it is to see.

Co-directed by two Palestinians (Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal) and two Israelis (Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor), No Other Land boils your blood for 95 minutes until you’re not sure there’s any left. It’s both a potent cry of resistance and desperate proof of existence. The film has played film festivals around the world, and has distribution plans for a theatrical run in Spain, the U.K., France, Germany, and Australia. But not the U.S. Rather, No Other Land is currently playing at Film at Lincoln Center for a one-week qualifying awards run, and then…? Maybe a company will pick it up, allow it to find its audience. Maybe it simply fades away.

Due to its subject, No Other Land finds itself ironically homeless. Its future is uncertain, but the reason it’s in this predicament is not a mystery. There have been plenty of great recent films covering ongoing global conflicts. One, 20 Days In Mariupol, won an Oscar in March. That film was made by AP journalists, struggling to survive a Russian siege that bombed a Ukrainian maternity hospital into rubble.

One must ask themselves what, then, is different about No Other Land’s crystal-clear condemnation of the war crimes unfolding before its cameras. Perhaps it’s that a snapshot of war, encapsulated in the hours or even days of battle, is easier to look at than decades of apartheid. Many would like to quietly pat No Other Land on the back and shove it into the shadows, some preferring to skip even that first step. This contradictory reception is best encapsulated by a now infamous moment of ass-covering surreality at the Berlin International Film Festival. After No Other Land won its Documentary Award, the German culture minister, Claudia Roth, was caught applauding the festival’s prizewinners during their speeches. She then said that, actually, she was only clapping for the Israeli directors. Right.

Before that surprisingly flexible and shameless display of political gymnastics (a 10 from the American judges!), Roth’s first reaction was correct. No Other Land is the political documentary of the year, riveting and infuriating as Adra and Abraham follow these villagers’ resistance to forced transfer. Adra, son of an activist, has been fighting for his home his whole life. Abraham, a journalist who lives half an hour away in Be’er Sheva, becomes close with Adra. Together, they rebuild homes and smoke, roast each other’s taste in music and fantasize about the future. Hope exists in their friendship, though it never overshadows the inequality. This is a place where the color of your license plate reflects your ability to move freely through the world, where you are either a “yellow man” or a “green man.” Adra and Abraham sweat over the same cinder blocks, but only one can leave them behind.

As they film, side-by-side, Masafer Yatta’s demolished homes, ruined elementary schools, chainsawed water lines, and cement-filled wells, all destroyed to make way for an Israeli military training ground, the directors’ professional relationship blooms into a bittersweet friendship. 

There’s still resentment. How could there not be, when one filmmaker drives back to the city every night, leaving those he spent the day with to return to their makeshift cave dwellings? Co-director Ballal, frustrated, even lets off steam about Abraham’s privileged position to his face. But slowly, solidarity builds from shared sweat spilled and threats weathered. Adra is beaten mercilessly by Israeli soldiers. His father is arrested without warning. An Israeli settler gets in Abraham’s face with his iPhone. “Here is a Jew who is helping them,” he says, filming. “You’re on Facebook, people will know you, and pay you a visit.”

And these are the lucky ones. Initially, it seems that the team’s handheld cameras might act as a preventative—a bit like how Barbara Kopple helped keep some striking coal miners alive in her groundbreaking 1973 doc Harlan County, USA. But, like in that film, the illusion of safety and the empty threat of accountability quickly vanishes. At least one casualty is caught on film, blown away by some soldiers attempting to steal a village’s generator. Another comes right at the end: In the final footage of No Other Land, captured in October 2023, an Israeli settler shoves Adra’s cousin, then shoots him point-blank in the stomach with a rifle.

The difference between No Other Land and the barrage of carnage shared every day online is that the film is bilingual, cross-cultural activism that is inextricable from its context but not reliant on it. It’s not a graphic image of a dead child, nor a dry history lesson. It is a Palestinian lifetime, a lifetime of repetition and rebuilding and struggle, condensed to an hour and a half. No Other Land does not need to give a crash course on the cruelties of the occupation. It’s plain to see, as bright and blunt as a bulldozer. The doc makes a conflict so often dismissed as “too complex” unavoidably simple.

But simplicity is still not enough. Things were simple in Never Look Away, the war journo doc, when it recalled a past we’ll never return to. A past when snippets of visceral footage were all it took to shape the opinions and emotions of nations. In our numbed present, the idea that a single piece of footage could enact change feels like a pipe dream. The violence hasn’t changed, but the bar for accountability has. No amount of evidence seems satisfactory to stop genocide, to stop war crimes. As No Other Land reaches the frayed tail end of its nervy account, its central pair discusses the outcome of their activism. “People need to figure out how to make change,” Abraham says. “Somebody watches something, they’re touched, and then?” 

Then…what, exactly? Abraham and Adra don’t have the answers—they can’t force those watching their footage to vote, to call, to protest, to pressure, to divest, to raise hell—but they can at least film what’s happening to them. But if people never get the chance to watch it? To be touched by it? And then?

No Other Land is currently playing at Film at Lincoln Center.