No Other Land (2025) [The most banned documentary in America]
The Oscar winning movie banned in every cinema in America, this film was recorded between 2019 and 2023 and shows the destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank, which had been resisting forced displacement after an Israeli "firing zone" was declared on their land…
Why ‘No Other Land’ Is the Most Important Film at the 2025 Oscars
The Palestinian-Israeli joint production about the illegal occupation of a small village in Palestine’s West Bank is the film everyone present at the ceremony should be standing in applause for.
To call ‘No Other Land’ a difficult watch is an understatement. It’s a documentary that thrusts the audience into the heart of conflict. The audience in attendance gasped as a man was shot point-blank attempting to stop his tools from being stolen on his property by Israeli military. There were audible sobs as we witnessed the heartbreaking resilience of people who simply refused to leave a home that was being torn from them. I’ve never had a cinema experience where the audience felt so as one — a collective body, sighing, heaving, grieving together. Some of the audience were most certainly Palestinian refugees; others, mere cinema-goers looking for insight into one of the most horrendous acts of inhumanity modern civilization has seen.
The footage was shot over four years, between 2019 and 2023, and documents the persistent attempts at occupying Masafer Yatta, a small collection of hamlets situated in Palestine’s West Bank. The film is centered around and directed by Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist and lifelong resident of Masafer Yatta, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist. As ‘No Other Land’ progresses we bear witness to the defiance of both men united by the shared mission of documenting everything that is going on in Masafer Yatta. It’s an emotional testament to the idea that it’s not what side you fight on, it’s about being on the right side of history — regardless of whether it means turning your back on the land that you were raised.
The film also does well to show the Palestinians as real people with real lives and dreams. All too often there can be layers of mental abstraction when dealing with communities under extreme turmoil: we see images distributed by charities, snippets of anguish on our television screens. But ‘No Other Land’ has occasional moments of reprieve: a mother jokes about only having bread available for dinner, Basel talks about his future and having children — our directors crack a wry smile at the idea of bringing up kids in “a complicated situation”; there are shared moments of wit, hope and laughter — and this again allows the cinema to create empathy.
Several times throughout the film, Basel Adra uses the camera as a weapon. Not literally, but by shoving the camera in front of faceless armed Israeli militia, he attempts to stop their illegal actions. “I’m filming you” he repeatedly says. Sometimes it works, others the sounds of anguish escape Basel as he’s brutally beaten down, while we watch helplessly through a camera — muffled and broken — that has been tossed violently to the ground.
It’s an emotionally draining cinema experience; with each new crash of a building under the force of an Israeli bulldozer, you can’t help but let out a sigh. It continually shows images that cut through the core of you. By the end you’ll likely feel you can’t take much more — and in these moments — think of how the Palestinians must feel every single day; by merely existing ‘No Other Land’ creates a more empathetic world.
Palestinian-Israeli Doc ‘No Other Land’ Wins Best Doc Feature at 2025 Oscars, Director Calls Out American Foreign Policy
During their 2025 Oscars speeches for the best documentary feature for No Other Land, the filmmakers called out U.S. foreign policy in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
He added: “We call on the world to stop the injustice and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”