Documentaries Ripped From the Headlines Are Becoming Harder to See

Several years ago, two Palestinians and two Israelis decided to make a documentary about the Israeli government’s efforts to demolish homes in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank.

“Even if you know the facts and understand that Masafer Yatta is being displaced so that settlements can take over the land, it’s very different when you see the face of a family that’s being kicked out of their house,” said Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist whose friendship with a Palestinian activist, Basel Adra, forms an important subplot of the movie they made. (Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the government has the right to clear the area.)

“No Other Land” received the best documentary prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it premiered in February, and similar recognition recently from the New York Film Critics Circle and the International Documentary Association. It was acquired for distribution in 24 countries, including the United Kingdom and France. And on Tuesday, it found itself on the official shortlist for the documentary feature Oscar.

But it still has no U.S. distributor. Aside from a couple of festivals and a one-week run at a Manhattan theater, filmgoers here could largely neither buy a ticket for “No Other Land” nor stream it.

“It could perhaps be explained by the thought that this topic is sensitive, and, ‘Why touch it? Why take the risk?’” Abraham said.

It is not the only documentary facing this predicament. “Union,” a dispatch from the picket lines and Zoom calls of the Amazon Labor Union’s successful organizing drive at a Staten Island warehouse, and “The Bibi Files,” an exposé of the corruption case against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, featuring leaked interrogation videos, are two other shortlisted current-affairs documentaries that neither studios nor streaming platforms have acquired.