No Other Land won the Oscar for best documentary on Sunday night. In their acceptance speech, the film's directors called on the world to end what they described as the "ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people."
"About two months ago, I became a father," said Basel Adra, a Palestinian journalist who was one of the film's four co-directors. "And my hope to my daughter that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing settlers, violence, home demolitions and forcible displacements."
The documentary, made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, follows the displacement of rural Palestinian communities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The villages were cleared to create space for a tank training ground for the Israeli military.
Filming began in 2019 and ended in 2023, shortly before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
"We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together, our voices are stronger," said Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist and No Other Land co-director. "When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control."
Abraham went on to call for a "political solution" that would ensure national rights for both Israelis and Palestinians, accusing the United States of "helping to block this path."
Although No Other Land was the year's highest-grossing Oscar-nominated documentary, it remains without an official U.S. distributor.
In an interview with NPR's Leila Fadel last year, Adra said he felt uncertain of the power of the camera after witnessing violence in Gaza.
"I always thought that when the people would see what's happening in the videos that we — I risk my life and other Palestinians risk their lives to film, it would change something," he said. "I mean, what happened in Gaza in the last year, I never, ever in my life imagined that we'd live to a day to see these massacres happening, and there's still the international community power backing Israel."
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