No Other Land Review: The Masafer Yatta people host not only Yuval Abraham but also the audience in their resistance.

No Other Land is a documentary about the inhuman occupation of the Masafer Yatta community under various excuses made by Israel's state policy. The film crew is an Israeli-Palestinian collective consisting of Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham. The film, which was shown at Berlinale and won the best documentary award, deeply impressed me when I watched it. In fact, I waited for some time to pass before writing my review. I respect the brave project of this collective, as we are going through a period in which those who speak out against the inhumane situation in Gaza are suppressed. Let me move on to the plot of the movie and what I think about it. (Our review, in a shorter form, is on our Instagram account.)

The film, which opens with the voice of Basel Adra, tells the story of the occupation that has been going on in the land where Basel Adra was born since his birth, his first memories, his family's memories, the video archive created by his family and the shots he took over time.

The reason for this occupation is to prevent the Israeli army from developing in Palestinian villages and to gather them in an area where it can manage. Although Basel, who studied law but only had the chance to work as a construction worker, despairs about his own life from time to time, he never loses his hopes for a free life in those lands. Yuval Abraham, who came to write the story of Masafar Yatta, also joins this resistance. As Yuval Abraham himself states in the movie, with his changed perspective after learning Arabic, he is less experienced in digesting the events and finding a response to his news. As tension increases, families displaced from their homes begin to live in caves. His mother looks after her son, who was shot and paralyzed for defending his home, in the cave. The power of the media only dramatizes things because there is no development that prevents what is happening. The character 'Ilan', the symbol of the occupying Israeli power. He has no mercy. This brutality extends to the school where the Masafar Yatta community proudly describes its construction and where their children now study.

The film ends with the latest events in Gaza and the images of the settlers brought by Israeli state policy taking control of that region by force of arms.

The film also shows how the daily lives and rights of two young people of the same age, an Israeli and a Palestinian, can change in the same land. Even though the movie gets away with improvisational moments at some points, I don't think this does much harm to the movie. The shots, sometimes taken from phones and sometimes with amateur cameras, make us witness every moment of the resistance. The local people host not only Yuval Abraham but also the audience in their resistance.

My point for the movie is 4.5/5.