The winners of Best Documentary Feature Film at the Oscars used their acceptance speech to highlight the need for peace in the Middle East and called for the liberation of Palestine, as well as the safety of Israel.
Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist, won the Oscar for their film “No Other Land,” a movie that shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers to create a military training ground and the encroachment of Jewish settlers on the Palestinian community. It explores the alliance that develops between the two men.
The documentary was filmed over four years between 2019 and 2023, wrapping production days before Hamas launched its deadly October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza.
Its directors appealed to the world to help end the conflict and accused the United States of blocking a solution.
The documentary highlights the parallel realities in which the two friends live – Abraham with his yellow Israeli number plate that lets him travel anywhere, Adra confined to a territory that only ever gets smaller for Palestinians.
“‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” Adra said on taking the stage.
Adra told crowds of A-listers, which included actress and former IDF soldier Gal Gadot, that he had recently become a father, and hoped his young daughter would not have to live in fear, as he had “under Israeli occupation.”
‘Together our voices are stronger’
Standing beside his co-director, Abraham added: “We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other, the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people which must end, the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7, which must be freed.”
The speech comes after Israel cut off the entry of all food and other goods into Gaza, in an echo of the siege it imposed in the earliest days of its war with Hamas. The United Nations and other humanitarian aid providers have sharply criticised the decision, calling it a violation of international law.
Foreign policy ‘blocking a political solution’
“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 law that destroys his life and he cannot control,” Abraham said.
“There is a different path. A political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say as I’m here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.
“And why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe. There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living.”
US President Donald Trump’s call last month for Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza, including to Egypt and Jordan, has been widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond as deeply destabilizing.
Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar, lamented the film’s win as a “sad moment for cinema,” because it presented what he described as a distorted view of Israel, still reeling from the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
“Freedom of expression is an important value, but using defamation of Israel as an international promotional tool harms the state of Israel, and after the October Seventh massacre and the ongoing war, it is doubly painful,” Zohar said on X.
No US distributors yet
Despite winning top prizes in Europe and the United States, the film has yet to reach a deal for US distribution, Abraham told Deadline last month.
Asked why he thought US distributors had passed on the film, Abraham told Deadline: “I believe it’s clear that it’s for political reasons. I hope that it will change.” He said they decided not to wait on the theatrical release and released it in almost 100 theatres independently.
Agencies
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