In the mountains on the southern edge of the West Bank is Massafer Yatta, a community of about twenty Bedouin villages, a territory declared illegitimate by the Israeli state and contested by the army from the residents to make it a military training area. Four young journalists, Palestinian and Israeli, joined forces to report the situation in No other landa moving feature film and first-hand document of the ongoing colonization process. Two of them, Basel Adra, a local who has been filming the expulsion of his people for years, and Yuval Abraham, an Arabic-speaking Israeli, came to Paris to support the release of the film. Far from their daily struggle, the privileged little bubble of the West diffuses over them a torpor that they bear with suspicion. Throughout the interview, they both take turns fighting exhaustion to make a powerful statement.
How was the film born?
Basel Adra: We are a group of four activist journalists, we met in the field. What we were documenting all the time, we decided to turn into a feature film with the help of Close Up, a development program for Middle Eastern non-fiction films. It took us five years, in very poor conditions. House demolitions could happen at any time, you had to be able to take everything down to run and film. The army could invade my house at any moment. Once they confiscated five cameras and a laptop that we activists used in the field. But we wanted to create awareness, political pressure and make sure our community is not wiped out by the occupation.
As journalists have experienced in the instant exercise of online media and social media, why did you choose to use cinema, a slower and more reflective form?
Yuval Abraham: When I first came to the West Bank five years ago, I was aware of the facts. I knew that the territory was occupied, that the army was destroying Palestinian homes to seize land located near the settlements. But on the spot, what made all the difference was the emotion. When you see the face of a family evacuated from their home, when you hear the sound of a grenade exploding next to you and feel your heart pounding, it’s a different kind of reality. Life under occupation goes beyond the journalistic transcription of facts. Furthermore, the violence in Massafer Yatta has been going on for decades. A journalist just passing through is likely to miss the big picture. I collected material over twenty-five years, and it took a long time to tell a story that spans three generations.
You still have 43.95% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
