Behind all the headlines about No Other Land

Earlier this week, Yuval Abraham, one of the co-directors of the Oscar winning documentary No Other Land, which documents Palestinian life under Israeli occupation, wrote on X that his fellow co-director Hamdan Ballal had been taken away by Israeli soldiers after being attacked by a group of settlers in the occupied West Bank. 

The next day, the Israeli military released Ballal. Authorities said he was detained for throwing rocks at settlers. Ballal denies this and says he was handcuffed all night and beaten at the military base. The IDF has not responded to Ballal's claim that he was beaten.

While headlines this week focus on the co-director's fate, the film has also been a lightning rod, attracting large audiences for a documentary, as well as vocal detractors, some of whom have tried to prevent its screening. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks to Deadline.com's documentary editor, Matt Carey, about the many headlines and reactions around No Other Land.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: The intensity of the reaction to this movie has been surprising to me in some regards  because there are some lengths that I just didn't think that people would go to to prevent people from seeing this film. And a good example of this is how the mayor of Miami Beach wanted to evict a cinema — the cinema that is on public land, on the city land, but nonetheless an operating cinema — that was screening No Other Land. And he said that he would evict them for screening that film. He later dropped that threat, but still doesn't change that the threat was made. What do you think it is about this movie that has made it this site of so much tension?

Matt: Well, I think any film that's going to touch on Israel and Palestine is going to be a bit of a lightning rod, no matter what position it stakes out, no matter how humanitarian, for instance, a perspective it may try to take on the issue. It's going to upset probably a lot of people on one side of the issue or the other side. I think that's kind of inevitable. 

I found it very interesting that through most of the awards season, as we approached the Academy Awards, No Other Land kept winning award after award, and it didn't really attract —  within the Motion Picture Academy — that much controversy. I kept waiting for there to be a backlash. Because one of the other films that qualified for Oscar consideration this year was originally called October H8te, it was later changed to October 8. This was really an examination of protests that developed on American college campuses after Oct. 7, and it was a very, very ardently pro-Israel film. So I just thought, "Wow, in this context, there's going to be a lot of Academy voters who will reject No Other Land." That didn't happen. And in fact, on Mar. 2,  when the Oscars happened and the film No Other Land was announced as the winner of best documentary feature, there was a standing ovation from the audience. And [when] Yuval Abraham, who [is] one of the co-directors, and Basel Adra, a Palestinian co-director of the film, spoke on behalf of the film, their remarks were interrupted by applause several times. It was warmly greeted by the Academy. 

But then, as you say, after it won, that's when people have really been attacking it, say on social media. Certain things that I've written on Deadline.com, you read the comments and there are people who say, "This is biased, it's antisemitic propaganda." And that's essentially what the mayor of Miami Beach said. He claimed to have seen the film, said that it was completely one-sided and unfair. And as you said, it just so happens that the theatre showing it was is on city-owned land. So they had some leverage over the cinema. And he advanced a resolution calling for the cinema's lease to be canceled. You know, cooler heads prevailed. And as you say, he withdrew that resolution. And the film is being seen fairly widely in the United States, even though it doesn't have an official distributor. 

Elamin: What difference has winning the Oscar made for a movie like No Other Land?  

Matt: Well, I think it has made a significant difference for it. I mean, you can look at Anora, winner of best picture, I think its box office fortunes were improved by that. It has an even more direct impact, I think, on a documentary. So many documentaries don't even get into theatres. In this case, they did essentially self-distribute the film. I was speaking with someone from Cinetic, which is the independent distributor and media company that is behind it [the film], and one of their senior people told me that they expected to cross the $2 million mark in box office revenue this weekend — and that's just in the U.S. and Canada alone. It is screening in Toronto at the [TIFF] Lightbox and doing very well there, from what I understand. So it helps when a documentary has won the Academy Award, it becomes part of the cultural currency. And people know that it's very, very timely, obviously. People around the world are deeply concerned about what's happening, not only in the West Bank, of course, and Gaza. So it's a super timely film, and I think people want to be part of the conversation and want to understand: why is this film being embraced? So winning that Oscar has really improved its fortunes quite a bit. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Matt Carey produced by Jean Kim.