Review: No Other Land

The Oscar-Winning Film America Doesn’t Want You to See

Last night, I watched No Other Land, a searing documentary co-directed by Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. This Oscar-winning film holds a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes — a rating many Hollywood blockbusters would envy — and yet, it’s been effectively banned from American theaters.

Instead of reclining seats and surround sound, we crowded into a room at the Wheaton Public Library. There were no posters announcing the screening. The internet cut in and out. Subtitles were hard to read because rows of people blocked the screen. All this after the original local screening in Aurora was cancelled after certain critics accused the venue of antisemitism for playing the film.

And still as we sat and watched in a crowded library room — it was worth every second.

I went with my 16-year-old son, a high school sophomore. Watching this film together was painful but necessary. We both came away stunned — not just by the images of cruelty and destruction, but by the raw courage of those fighting to survive under apartheid.

This screening, organized by Advocates for Justice and If Not Now, and attended by a deeply engaged audience, was not just a film event — it was an act of resistance. And it's telling that it had to happen in the corners of our civic spaces, not in our mainstream cinemas.

The film documents the brutal and systematic demolition of Palestinian homes in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills. It shows the Israeli state’s relentless push to dispossess Palestinians of their land through an (il)legal and military machinery that operates with impunity. We meet villagers who have rebuilt their homes time and again, only to watch them razed by bulldozers — often while soldiers stand guard and Israeli settlers cheer.

But No Other Land goes beyond footage. It offers insight. One of the most shocking truths I learned while watching it was this: the Israeli government doesn’t just want to displace Palestinians — they want to rearrange them. The goal of the demolitions isn’t simply destruction. It’s a coordinated strategy to force Palestinians into crowded apartment blocks, away from their ancestral lands, so they are easier to monitor, control, and ultimately erase.

This is settler colonialism, plain and simple. Illegal settlements — built in defiance of international law — continue to expand while Palestinian villages are bulldozed and declared “firing zones” or “state land.” Families who have lived on the same soil for generations are given eviction orders. Children grow up watching their homes destroyed in front of them not once, not twice, but over and over again.

The film doesn’t let us look away.

And yet, American mainstream media and cinema are doing just that — looking away. This country, flooded with promotions for movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer, has no room for a documentary that challenges the dominant narrative about Israel. It is not just neglect. It is an act of erasure. An unwillingness to allow Palestinian voices to tell their stories — even when those stories are told hand-in-hand with Jewish allies committed to justice.

What does it say about us, as a society, that we make space for propaganda, but not for truth? That we champion free speech, but only for some?

No Other Land is a film that every American should see. Especially because our tax dollars are funding these injustices. This film is a moral mirror — and many of us won’t like the reflection. But that discomfort is necessary. And so is the outrage, because that outrage is what we need to drive the calls for justice and humanity.

We shouldn’t be forced to watch Oscar-winning films about genocide in cramped library rooms with flickering Wi-Fi and no official signage. But until our institutions find the courage to amplify voices like Basel and Yuval’s, we will keep gathering where we must — because No Other Land dares to say what too many are afraid to hear.