By Elmer Ploetz

One thing to remember about documentaries is that like all films, and all art for that matter, they come from a perspective.

Even in the days of the “voice of God” documentaries, there was a point of view. It was just assumed, not clearly spelled out.

“No Other Land” clearly comes from the perspective of a Palestinian living in the West Bank area (the Masafer Yatta area, to be specific), and it’s essential viewing if you want to understand what it is like to be Palestinian in an occupied territory.

The film is screening twice on Saturday (May 10) at Hallwalls Contemporary Art, and both showings are already sold out. The screening, presented by a partnership of  Hallwalls, Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center, LOLA (Liberation for One, Liberation for All), Jewish Voice for Peace Buffalo and the Buffalo International Film Festival, will be followed by discussions led by  LOLA and Jewish Voice for Peace Buffalo. It is co-sponsored by the WNY Peace Center and Veterans for Peace.

As a film, “No Other Land” is crushing to watch as Palestinian families who have lived on these lands for nearly 200 years see their homes destroyed to make way for an Israeli army firing range. According to the film, secret documents have been uncovered showing the firing range was created with the goal to “block Arab villagers from expanding.”

Any politics aside, the film captures the experience of those who have (or in many cases had) lived on the land. It was filmed over a four-year period (2019-23) by a set of four self-described activists, two of whom appear on camera, and with access to an archive of video from one of the activists (Basel Adra) and his family.

Palestinians Adra and Hamdan Ballal created the film with Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, but it’s a film about the Palestinian experience foremost. In an effort to give the story characters to build around, the documentary focuses on the friendship of Adra and Abraham, and the challenges inherent in an Palestinian-Israeli friendship.

It’s a little forced at times as the viewer remembers that there is someone else there who is shooting the pair’s heart-to-heart moments, which feel a bit like soliloquys at times. However that staging was no doubt required to pull out details the verite footage itself couldn’t provide and to explain the filmmakers’ partnership.

The film itself is relentless as house after house is destroyed, as Adra’s father is arrested, as his cousin is shot and paralyzed when struggling with soldiers to keep them from taking his family’s gas generator. Israeli “settlers,” accompanied by Israeli troops, intimidate and attack Palestinians, who have been forbidden to even drive on the roads through the villages of Masafer Yatta.

Perhaps the most crushing moment is when the elementary school that was covertly built a generation before and then preserved after a politicallly beneficial visit from then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is finally bulldozed as its elementary school-aged students look on.

There’s no mention of religion or the Palestinian Authority that nominally governs the West Bank. Instead the focus is intensely personal.

Filming finished just before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and atrocities by Hamas on Israelis and the subsequent Israeli attacks killing tens of thousands of Gazan Palestinians. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, there were more attacks by the settlers. The film reports more Palestinians were forced to flee their homes.

The film won an Oscar in March as the best feature-length documentary film of the year, but it hasn’t been able to find a distributor in the United States. Its two Palestinian filmmakers, Adra and Ballal, have both suffered attacks from settlers this year. Ballal was attacked in his home and then was pulled out of ambulance and detained by Israeli soldiers afterward.

This film doesn’t pretend to be a news program with its “he said, she said” or to show both sides of an issue. Instead it’s a clear display of how things look through the eyes of a Palestinian.

It leaves the viewer wondering, “What would I do if I were a Palestinian in that situation?”