Filming in the Line of Fire: The Human Price of No Other Land

Review (7)

Seeing Palestine as a Home — A Home Turned into a Battlefield

The Price of Telling the Truth: Lessons from No Other Land

In March 2025, two Palestinians and two Israelis—none of whom had ever made a film before—walked onto the stage to receive an Academy Award, the most prestigious honor in cinema, for Best Documentary Feature. It was also the first Palestinian film in history to win on that stage. Their documentary, No Other Land, was made in the hope of drawing the world’s attention to the injustices surrounding them—and, with luck, helping change arrive one day.

The first two returned home only to face attacks on their lives and property: one had rocks thrown at his house; the other was beaten and taken to a military camp, where he was detained.

The other two, while castigated by some as “anti-national,” could still return home and live ordinary lives as citizens with full civil rights.

These two groups live only thirty minutes apart.

And within months, a Palestinian consultant on the film was shot dead.

No Other Land is therefore not only a documentary about Palestinians’ struggle for their land. It also reveals the price media makers must pay to deliver the truth to the eyes of the world.

Imagine that the land your family has lived on for hundreds or thousands of years is suddenly redrawn on the map as a “military firing zone,” where soldiers can use live ammunition and blast buildings at any time. Since the 1980s, life for people in the West Bank has hung on that uncertainty. Homes have been demolished again and again. Schools have been forced to move, and move again. Roads once open to everyone can, on any given day, become routes controlled by the military.

After more than two decades of legal battles, in 2022 the Supreme Court of Israel issued a ruling that cleared the way for demolitions and evacuations in these “firing zones”—actions Israeli forces and settlers had “often undertaken”—to proceed “legally.”

Lawful on paper, but unjust for people’s lives.

Though they are the same age and live less than an hour apart, the lives of Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham are worlds away. As a Palestinian, Basel lives under military law; simply moving through his day is difficult, and the risk of arrest or assault is constant. As an Israeli, Yuval is protected by civil law, has the right to vote, and can travel freely within and beyond the country.

Basel is a Palestinian activist who grew up in Masafer Yatta, a small village designated as part of the firing zone. He picked up a camera to record everything because, for him, a camera isn’t an artistic tool—it is proof that “my home really stood here.”

Yuval Abraham is an Israeli journalist who recognized the chasm—heaven and hell separated by a single step across a border. After meeting and befriending Basel, he chose to join the filming, becoming part of the team that carried the story of Masafer Yatta to the world.

Every time a bulldozer plows through a home, every time officials raid a house, every time oppressors attack and intimidate, the images recorded become evidence—a counter-narrative that challenges the authorities’ account. For journalists, picking up a camera in a place like this isn’t standing on the sidelines; it is stepping directly into the line of fire, because the footage may become evidence that confronts state power. We have seen how this power works—from the Arab Spring to Hong Kong and even protests in Thailand—where phone videos have become part of our contemporary history.

Basel once said, “The camera is the only tool we have to prove the truth.” That line captures the role of documentary as a “shout” from places that are often silenced—echoing Bill Nichols’s view of documentary as a mode that gives “evidentiary weight” to voices, and Susan Sontag’s argument that photographs are “evidence of truth.”

In a world where the state can control the narrative, the camera becomes a second pair of eyes—one that forces those in power to be accountable for what they do.

Despite sweeping awards at festivals and ceremonies—Berlinale, the BAFTAs, and the Oscars—success did not guarantee safety. Just days after stepping onstage in Los Angeles in a suit, Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal was attacked by settlers, some reportedly in Israeli military uniforms. He was beaten, struck on the head with a rifle butt, blindfolded, zip-tied, and even pulled out of an ambulance on its way to treat him—then detained on a freezing concrete floor for more than 24 hours on the baseless charge of “throwing a stone at a settler youth.”

A few months later, Awdah Hathaleen, an activist and consultant on the film, was shot in the lungs by a hardline settler and died soon after. Basel himself was assaulted and his home ransacked by armed men—like many others in the village.

And the danger wasn’t limited to attacks after the film’s release. Filming in a high-risk zone meant living with violence that could erupt at any moment. Soldiers raided Basel’s home twice to seize his computer and cameras, trying to shut the documentary down. During production, Harun Abu Aram—one of the film’s subjects—was shot and left paralyzed while trying to protect village property. Forced displacement and inadequate care later led to his death.

This is not unique to Palestine; intimidation of truth-tellers happens worldwide. In Romania, documentary director Mihai Dragolea and his crew were badly beaten while filming illegal logging. In the Philippines, Maria Ressa has faced relentless lawsuits and harassment for reporting on human rights and politics. And in Thailand, intimidation by influence and SLAPP suits are a recurring reality. UNESCO reports that between 2009 and 2023 there were more than 749 cases of attacks or harassment against environmental journalists and outlets, and over 70% of environmental reporters worldwide have faced direct intimidation. ACLED recorded nearly 520 incidents in 2022 in which journalists around the world were assaulted or threatened while on assignment.

All of this underscores a simple truth: “risk” has become the common ground of media work. Whether filmmakers, documentarians, or reporters, media makers are not mere observers—they are the ones standing at the front line of danger to make sure the outside world knows what is happening.

Moreover, the risk doesn’t stop with the makers; it extends to the communities and subjects being filmed. Having a camera pointed at you can raise public awareness, but it can also make you a bigger target for retaliation. Many villagers who appeared in No Other Land continue to face harassment—stones hurled at their homes, attacks that persisted even after the Oscars. Basel has said that after returning from the ceremony, they were attacked every day, as if being punished for making the film.

At the same time, this speaks to a larger truth about the media industry. Local teams and fixers are the ones who guide us into villages, open doors to language and culture, and talk with the oppressed. Yet when the work is published, the names most visible are often those of foreign directors or journalists, while the locals who took the greatest risks remain unprotected and barely credited. More than once, international newsrooms have won Pulitzers while the local fixers’ names went unmentioned—even though they may have faced the most danger. Inequality exists not only in the stories being told, but within the structure of storytelling itself, where different contributors pay very different prices.

So why keep filming?

Because without images, the world has no evidence.

Without voices, the world has no witness.

Basel said in an interview: “I’m not strong. I don’t have hope or the power to fight the oppressor. The only things we have are a camera, and the stubbornness of the whole community not to give up—the stubbornness not to let the story of this small village vanish from memory just because no one pressed ‘record.’”

Although No Other Land could not halt demolitions, attacks, or violence overnight, it created a huge ripple. The name “Masafer Yatta” appeared in global media and at UN tables. Screenings at festivals and community centers carried the voice of a small, once-unknown community to people around the world—and drew many more to care, to pay attention, and to add their voices.

One person’s voice may go unheard; but when many speak together, that sound reverberates and becomes a force. Documentaries may not stop wars—but they can change how the world sees them. At the very least, they leave “traces in history” and a “collective memory” that prevents injustice from being forgotten.

No Other Land is not only about a village being erased. It is about makers who choose to risk their safety, their freedom, and sometimes their lives so that truth can travel—through a screen—to reach its audience.

This is the true price of documentary filmmaking. The film’s final question to us is not simply “What does it show?” but rather: “Now that we have seen and know, what will we do?”

Join us in unpacking these lessons, and look more deeply at the price documentary makers pay. Watch No Other Land now at www.VIPA.me and on the VIPA Application. 🧡