The Israeli and the Palestinian who teamed up to film one of the best documentaries of the year
Yuval Abraham, who has received death threats in his country, and Basel Adra presented ‘No Other Land’ at the Atlántida festival in Mallorca after it was awarded a Silver Bear at the Berlinale. ‘It’s very hard for us to be screening the film in Spain while the nightmare and attacks continue in Gaza’
The first memory Basel Adra says he has of his childhood is of his father’s arrest by the Israel Defense Forces. Two years later, when Adra was seven years old, he was already taking part in his first demonstration against the expulsion, authorized by the Israeli Supreme Court, of more than 1,000 villagers from Masafer Yatta, in the southern West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
A 25-minute drive away, in the Jewish town of Be’er Sheva, Yuval Abraham, the same age, was growing up. His Jewish-Arab grandfather spoke to his grandmother in the language of the Quran when he didn’t want his grandson to understand what they were talking about.
That territorial proximity, but a huge chasm in terms of citizens’ rights, has led them 20 years later to be the stars and co-directors of No Other Land, winner of the Silver Bear for best documentary at the 2024 Berlinale and other awards at prestigious festivals such as the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam, Visions du Réel, and the Sheffield DocFest.
“We come from two different societies but we share the same values and fight for the same goals. We want justice and an end to apartheid, for everyone to be free and equal. Those are the values that have united us,” Adra, now 27, tells EL PAÍS.
But it was his Jewish friend Abraham’s anti-occupation and anti-apartheid narrative at the ceremony that provoked extremists to call him a traitor, issuing death threats and harassing his family’s home in Be’er Sheva.
Abraham learned Arabic at age 20 guided by his grandfather, born in Jerusalem but of Arabic descent, and with whom, before his death, he came to have conversations in the language.
His interest in learning about the Arab perspective led him to found projects like Across the Wall, a platform he created in 2019 with Ahmed Alnaouq, which translates Palestinians’ testimonies and opinions about the government into Hebrew.
Abraham and Adra claim to be journalists before filmmakers, but none of the articles they wrote for the independent +972 Magazine had the media impact and popular response of No Other Land. They acknowledge the momentum of being honored at the Berlinale, which led them, they say, to receive hundreds of requests and messages from people and organizations who wanted to see the film.