On March 2, No Other Land, a film chronicling Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature. Made by a team of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, the documentary had already won more than 50 major awards, and at the Oscars, it made international news when its co-directors called “on the world” to “stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people” in their acceptance speech.
Making the win even more notable, the film had no official U.S. distributor at the time, despite being the year’s highest-grossing Oscar-nominated documentary.
In Pittsburgh, despite critical acclaim and numerous Oscar movie showcases, No Other Land was screened only twice before its win, and one other time since. The region has also has yet to show The Encampments, a documentary about the student protest movement at Columbia University, featuring detained student activist Mahmoud Khalil. In contrast, October 8, a documentary exploring the “explosion of anti-Semitism on college campuses” following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks, recently had a weeks-long run at AMC Waterfront 22. Hollywood publications described the “battle” between October 8 and No Other Land as “the Middle East conflict playing out at the box office.”
Rather than industry competition, the dearth of No Other Land showings in Pittsburgh is representative of a suppressive climate nationwide, say the screenings’ organizers, and the difficult choices independent film programmers and nonprofit organizations face when showing the Palestinian perspective.
“We can see stories all across the country of people and organizations facing repercussions for exhibiting this film,” Steven Haines, Pittsburgh Sound + Image director of programming, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. In March, Miami Beach, Fla. Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution to cancel an art house cinema’s lease and withdraw city funding for screening No Other Land. (Showings at O Cinema sold out, and Meiner’s proposal was later dropped amid public outcry.)
“The film is widely lauded, but is being repressed by the film industry,” Jacob Paul, a Jewish Voice for Peace Pittsburgh member who helped organize No Other Land screenings, wrote to City Paper prior to the 97th Academy Awards on Mar. 2. Paul speculated that “the film might not ever be shown in theaters here again if it doesn’t win an Oscar.”
Even with laurels, the film has been screened in Pittsburgh only one time since.
Both Haines and Paul heard about No Other Land months before its Oscar nomination. Though Pittsburgh Sound + Image, a nonprofit dedicated to film preservation, usually screens older movies shown on film, Haines felt this “shouldn’t be a hold up to to doing something for this incredibly important and urgent cause.” He with worked independent exhibition consultant Michael Tuckman, the sole U.S. contact distributing No Other Land at the time, and set out to find a Pittsburgh venue.
“The approach was, it was a hot new film. There was a lot of buzz about it … so the goal was to get a week-long run or more in Pittsburgh,” Haines tells CP. “I pretty quickly arrived at the conclusion that nobody else in Pittsburgh would book the film, or could book the film, even if they wanted to.”
Ultimately, No Other Land was presented by Pittsburgh Sound + Image in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace Pittsburgh and Ratzon Center for Healing and Resistance for a single day before its Oscar win. Two March 1 screenings at the Carnegie Museum of Art’s 200-seat auditorium sold out within 48 hours.
Though the film has been criticized by Israel supporters as antisemitic and a “carefully crafted piece of demagoguery,” it’s also been praised as “the year’s most powerful documentary.”
“I don’t think it’s a radical film,” Paul says. “The goal of it is to humanize Palestinians, which is a pretty modest goal.”
No Other Land focuses on Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in the Hebron mountains, which have been occupied by Israeli Defense Forces since the country declared the area a military “firing zone” in the 1970s. Co-director Basel Adra, also a trained lawyer, shows his life under occupation in the West Bank — not frequently seen in the West — filming with Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham. Recorded between 2019 and 2023 (and ending shortly before the Oct. 7 attacks), No Other Land shows IDF soldiers cutting water lines with a chainsaw, filling a well with concrete (citing improper permitting), demolishing a school and a playground with bulldozers, and razing villagers’ homes.
When a young Palestinian, Harun Abu Aram, protests a generator being seized, a soldier shoots him at point-blank range, paralyzing him from the neck down. (Abu Aram died shortly after filming.) Despite the film’s acclaim, one of No Other Land‘s Palestinian co-directors, Hamdan Ballal, was beaten and detained by Israelis only weeks after its Oscar win, and demolition continues in Masafer Yatta.
At a Carnegie Museum of Art showing, the Pittsburgh audience was silent after the film ended. While Paul and Haines considered holding a Q&A afterward, “ultimately, everybody involved felt [what] we needed was to give people space to reflect, to sit with their thoughts,” Haines says. Ratzon and Jewish Voice for Peace Pittsburgh, whose national website describes the organization as an “intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle,” handed out printed resources that quickly ran out.
“People were really moved and, in a way, shocked,” Paul remembers. “I think that’s what this film is good for: challenging a simplistic worldview … [It] comes back to fundamental questions. Do we owe a responsibility to people we don’t know? Can we have peace of mind if we know that other people are suffering at our system’s behest? Those are questions that are never going to make the front page of The New York Times, but that we need to continue to ask ourselves and wrestle with.”
Typically, an Oscar win pushes films and audiences back into theaters, even earning them a wider release, but only one No Other Land showing, at Oakland’s Community of Reconciliation Church, has been held in Pittsburgh since March. Last month, the film became available to stream for the first time in the U.S.
“The truth is, we are in a type of Red Scare,” Haines says. “There’s very real fear of even talking about the subject matter that’s not in complete agreement with the U.S. government and Israeli government perspective.”
While both Haines and Paul say they’re open to future No Other Land showings, they hope it’s not a “one-and-done.”
“Solidarity is not just watching a film, [but] I hope we can screen it again in order to bring those ideas to people,” Paul tells CP. Haines has been looking into showing older and historical films that would shed light on the present conflict. In a chilling environment with proposed legislation that would give the president authority to revoke groups’ nonprofit status by deeming them “terrorist supporting organizations” (the so-called “nonprofit killer” bill), Haines says it’s important for organizations like Pittsburgh Sound + Image “not to shy away from our political beliefs.”
“I feel like I should use what privilege I do have, while I’ve got it, to support these causes,” he says.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.
