No Other Land

For half a decade, the Palestinian activist and director Basel Adra has chronicled Israel’s escalating encroachment upon Masafer Yatta, the West Bank village where he was raised. No Other Land, which he co-directed as part of a Palestinian-Israeli collective, invites its audience to bear witness to that ongoing destruction, turning a camera on Israeli soldiers as they tear down homes and evict Palestinian inhabitants. The documentary is at once a record of settlers’ violence in the West Bank and a reminder that alternate paths are possible: No Other Land also depicts the complex bond between Adra and one of the film’s other directors, the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who is able to move freely through their shared homeland even as Adra and other Palestinians cannot. Their friendship underscores the injustice at the center of the film and suggests that apartheid is not an inevitability. For its clear-eyed documentation of the ongoing occupation in the West Bank, and its evocative testament to the power of co-creation, No Other Land wins a Peabody Award.