Serdar Dincel
03 March 2025•Update: 03 March 2025
ISTANBUL
The directors of No Other Land, a documentary depicting life in a West Bank village under Israeli military occupation, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, urged the world to take action to stop injustice against the Palestinian people.
"We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people,” co-director Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, said in an acceptance speech.
"About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope to my daughter (is) she will not have to live the same life I am living now,” Adra noted.
Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist and co-director of No Other Land, referred to Adra as his “brother” but lamented that they are considered “unequal.”
“We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life,” Abraham said.
Abraham called for an end to the violence that has plagued the Middle East for decades, which escalated following the Palestinian group Hamas's attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and Israel's deadly offensive in Gaza.
“We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger,” Abraham noted, adding: “We see each other. The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people must end.”
"The Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of Oct. 7 must be freed.”
He called on the world to pursue "a different path," one focused on a political solution where neither side dominates the other and both peoples have their rightful place.
Abraham also criticized the US government, accusing its foreign policy of blocking this path.
No Other Land received widespread acclaim as one of the top-reviewed documentary features of the last year.
Despite its success, it didn't secure theatrical distribution in the US, which the filmmakers linked to the political sensitivities surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to NBC News.
However, the film was shown at independent theaters in select cities and digital screeners were provided to Academy voters.
