Ignore the row: this Oscar-winning film offers a vision of a shared Palestine forged in solidarity

In 2009, Tony Blair visited Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the Palestinian West Bank. He had come to see a school that had gained attention for having been rebuilt in defiance of Israeli attempts to tear down the village. After he returned home, Israel cancelled the demolition order for the school. "This," Basel Adra says, "is a story about power."

- Kenan Malik

Adra is one of the directors of No Other Land, a documentary about the experience of living through, and attempting to defy, Israel's attempts to erase Masafer Yatta to create an IDF “firing zone”. Last week, it won an Oscar. In the 1980s, Israeli authorities designated part of the area as “Firing Zone 918”, a closed military area. In 1999, the government issued eviction orders against Palestinians in the area for “illegally living in a firing zone”. Two decades of court battles ended in 2022 when Israel's supreme court ruled the villagers could be expelled.

The documentary is a collaboration between Adra and three other co-directors: Israeli journalist and activist Yuval Abraham, whose growing, tense friendship with Adra forms a key thread in the film; Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian farmer and photographer; and Rachel Szor, an Israeli cinematographer.

Shot mainly between 2019 and 2023, it is a film about power. The power of Israel to assail Palestinian lives; the lack of power of Palestinians trying to resist. Even Blair's tepid intervention was temporary. In 2022, the IDF forced children and teachers out of the school, moments before bulldozers flattened it.