‘No Other Land’ Won an Oscar. Many People Hope You Don’t See It.

The Oscar win for “No Other Land” for best documentary ought to have been a triumphant moment for Palestinian and Israeli cinema and society — a rare instance in which artists from both communities stood on the world stage together to receive acclaim for a film they made together. But not everybody was celebrating. The reception of “No Other Land” became a microcosm of the very struggle the film seeks to document. The Israeli minister of culture referred to the Oscar win as “a sad moment for the world of cinema.”

“No Other Land” documents destruction and a series of forced displacement attempts in the West Bank area called Masafer Yatta from 2019 to 2023, told from the perspective of the Palestinians who are harassed by settlers and whose homes are being demolished by the Israeli military. The twist is a story within the story, that of a friendship and resistance effort of two of the four filmmakers, one Palestinian and one Israeli. The film’s achievements, both narrative and emotional, were recognized early: It won the Berlinale documentary award in 2024.

But success brought backlash. From the awards stage in Berlin, the Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra called for Germany to stop weapons exports to Israel. His Israeli Jewish co-creator Yuval Abraham then explained that, when they returned home, they would be back to unequal realities, one in which Mr. Abraham travels freely and another in which Mr. Adra has no freedom of movement. Mr. Abraham called it an apartheid system, which enraged Israeli media and rattled German allies.

Before they returned to the Middle East, Mr. Abraham received death threats, his family faced harassment, and a mob surrounded his family’s home. The immediate threat eventually died down, but even now the film doesn’t have a streaming deal or theatrical distribution agreement in the United States.

At the Academy Awards, the filmmakers did not say anything more radical than what they did in Berlin. “‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality that we’ve been enduring for decades,” Mr. Adra told the audience. Mr. Abraham added: “We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws. … Can’t you see that we are intertwined?”

It seems to us that not everyone was as moved as we were by the powerful image of four filmmakers — two Palestinians, two Israelis — holding their golden statuettes together. In winning, the Palestinian-Israeli filmmaking team seemed to be defying the zero-sum logic that dominates the region.