Why US art houses screen Oscar-winning Palestinian doc that mainstream theaters shun
Despite winning an Academy Award, ‘No Other Land’ is seldom seen in commercial cinemas. In many small theaters, showings are regularly full, audiences eager and reviews positive
Reporter at The Times of Israel
BROOKLINE, Massachusetts — Just as Palestinian Basel Adra began narrating the opening scenes of “No Other Land” — the Oscar-winning documentary about Masafer Yatta, his embattled home in the West Bank — six late-coming moviegoers burst through the screening room doors, filling the 25-seat space in the Coolidge Corner Theatre nearly to capacity.
An audience of young and old, singletons and couples, had turned out on a drizzly St. Patrick’s Day evening to watch this film. Some visibly demonstrated their support for Palestine with accessories such as watermelon-slice pins or keffiyehs. The film tells the story of Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian villages located in a region that the Israel Defense Forces have declared a training zone.
The narrative centers around Basel, a lawyer by training and activist by necessity. Upset by IDF servicemembers who demolish Palestinian homes with the goal of forcing villagers off their land, he organizes peaceful protests that receive a violent response from the military.
Basel’s activism draws the attention of Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who visits Masafer Yatta to document the situation and gradually becomes more than a reporter, seeking to help residents stay on their land. The film is a collaboration between two Palestinians — Masafer Yatta residents Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal — and two Israelis, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
“We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger,” Abraham told the Oscars audience in a heartfelt moment when the film won Best Documentary.
The film is not charting ancient history: Ballal was allegedly beaten by settlers and arrested by Israeli security forces on Monday night in the village of Susya, which neighbors Masafer Yatta. Fellow filmmaker Adra said he witnessed Ballal’s detention for alleged stone-throwing. On Tuesday, the police informed Ballal and two others that they are suspected of stone-throwing, assaulting an Israeli and damaging a vehicle. The three were released on bail and transferred to receive medical treatment at a Palestinian hospital.
Only in select theaters
Despite the Oscar award, opportunities like that St. Patrick’s Day screening are relatively rare in the Boston area. Just two local theaters — the Coolidge Corner and the West Newton Cinema — are currently showing the film, along with occasional screenings hosted by activist groups. That’s despite the region being home to multiple other independent theaters with a penchant for edgy docs.
The film lacks a distributor in the US, and in the shadow of the October 7 2023, Hamas atrocities, the subsequent, ongoing Israeli war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and accusations of weaponized antisemitism and anti-Zionism, at least one screening elsewhere in the country has met with political pushback — an unsuccessful mayoral attempt to stop a Miami Beach movie house from showing it.
Yet those who’ve seen the film locally report full houses and a fuller understanding of the situation on the ground in Israel and Palestine.
“It needs to be seen, it needs to be shown,” said Kim Kronenberg of Brookline, who saw “No Other Land” at the Coolidge Corner in early March with her husband, Allen Taylor.
Kronenberg and Taylor know something about joint Israeli-Palestinian ventures. They are American Jews with science and health backgrounds who direct an organization called Science Training Encouraging Peace, or STEP. Its mission: To bring Israeli and Palestinian students to work together on STEM projects at Israeli universities.
“Many of the Israelis and Palestinians really didn’t know anything about the other’s society or life challenges before they joined STEP,” said Taylor, a longtime director of the Laboratory for Vision and Nutrition Research at Tufts University Medical Center. “Many STEP fellows live only a few miles apart from one another, yet they had no idea about the other’s culture… often they do not even speak the same language. Because they work together and can use English in their laboratories, they’ve become much more sensitized and sensitive to one another.”
In the film, that’s exactly what happens between Abraham and Adra, to the point where they even joke about marrying each other. Yet what brings them together is something very serious: Palestinians with longstanding claims to the land are being forced off it, their homes destroyed by Israeli bulldozers and the former occupants having to live in caves. When residents protest, they are met with stun grenades, gunfire and imprisonment.
Emily Glick, a Jewish American activist who currently lives in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, has followed the film from Masafer Yatta to her hometown. She did activism and solidarity work in Masafer Yatta, and first saw the film there, when it was screened in the courtyard of a village school last March.
“I think the film is incredibly powerful,” she said, citing “the potential for relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, based in co-resistance, resisting together against the policies of expulsion and oppression, fighting together to resist these in order to achieve a shared future together.”
On March 5, Glick helped organize a sold-out screening at the Cambridge Community Center, sponsored by three politically left Jewish activist groups: Kavod Boston, IfNotNow and the Boston Workers Circle. She described the turnout — 180 people — as higher than expected. Organizers had to close registration two days before the screening and changed the venue within the community center from a small room to a gymnasium to accommodate demand. All profits were donated to Masafer Yatta.
“The people who I’m sure ended up coming were … very politically open and interested in learning more about what’s happening in the West Bank,” Glick said. “It’s why they decided to come.”
That rang true for Taylor and Kronenberg when they went to the Coolidge to see it.
“Although we lived in Israel a couple of times, we never really saw displacement in action,” Taylor said. “Seeing that displacement, people being removed from their land by the army, often with no warning, is… of course it’s very upsetting. The movie makes this point vividly.”
Kronenberg recalled an image that remained seared in her brain — “Palestinian families watching as their home is destroyed, and asking the soldiers, ‘Why are you doing this?’”
Top-ten bestselling film of the year
The film covers a period of time between 2019 and 2023, before Hamas launched the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre that would see some 1,200 people slaughtered in southern Israel and 251 kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, forever altering the political landscape in the region. In the closing moments, it notes fears that the Israeli response to the onslaught will adversely affect Masafer Yatta.
Staff members of Boston-area movie houses showing the film defend their decision to screen it.
“The Coolidge decided to screen ‘No Other Land’ because we are a cinema and it aligns with our mission to entertain, inform and engage, building vital community through film culture,” Katherine Tallman, executive director and CEO of the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation, wrote in an email.
“No Other Land” debuted at the Coolidge Corner in February, as part of the Boston Palestine Film Festival, and sold out the 440-seat house. It’s the No. 10 best-selling film at the theater during the current fiscal year.
The West Newton Cinema started screening the film later, after the Oscars. The president of the board of directors of its foundation, Elizabeth Heilig, told the media that it was the theater’s No. 2 performer during its weekend premiere, behind this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, “Anora.”
“We try to show films that are critically acclaimed,” Heilig told The Times of Israel. And, she said, “We try to show films that reflect a wide diversity of opinions.”
“There are certainly a lot of opinions on the ongoing war, and the difficulties Israel is facing,” said Heilig, who noted in a follow-up email that the theater will co-host the Boston Israeli Film Festival later in March.
“Within our community, Newton and the Greater Boston area, we had several requests from people to see the film. We just feel it’s important to provide an opportunity for people to see this kind of film … allow them to make up their own minds about it,” said Heilig.
“I support freedom of speech,” Kronenberg said. “I know there are people who object to the show and say there are some inaccuracies. I feel like there are inaccuracies in most of the movies we see, and the movie houses don’t refuse to show them.”
She appreciated watching the film in a venue where it was meant to be seen.
“Certainly, seeing [“No Other Land”] in a theater is a different experience than seeing it at home,” Kronenberg said. “The large screen makes it more immediate, and the community is around you… You’re not just alone. Other people are interested in seeing it.”
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