NO ANOTHER LAND

Οκτ 28, 2024 Κινηματογράφος 0

FILM REVIEWS

THE GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE

No other land: by Kallitsa Vlachou

After the thrill what? This is the question that Palestinian Basil Andra and Israeli Yuval Abraham, whom we follow in their documentary “No Other Land”, attempt to answer. It won the award for best documentary at the Berlinale and very recently a similar award at the Premiere Nights.

No Other Land: The camera

They attempt to respond with their only weapon being the camera and the frame-by-frame recording of events that have been happening for decades in Masafer Yatta. An area located at the southern tip of the West Bank, in Palestine. It consists of about 20 villages that were established there long before the establishment of the State of Israel. These were villages consisting of ancient stone buildings and their inhabitants were mainly engaged in animal husbandry and agriculture.

Watching the documentary “No Other Land”, it is easy to see that what is happening in the Mashafer Yatta area is happening in the entire West Bank, where Palestinians were living excluded and constantly displaced every day, every moment.

The past tense refers to what was happening before the war that broke out in the area as a result of the Hamas attack. Because we no longer know either how many people live in the entire West Bank or how they live – certainly much worse than what is captured on camera, since the documentary, which took five years to shoot, ended in October 2023.

No other land: Recording the Truth

Usually, in the documentary field, there is no single “truth”. The filmmaker has at his/her disposal tools such as: the editing, the angle of the shot, the people he/she chooses to talk to, and even the locations where the project will be filmed. But here, without any exaggeration, the one and only truth is recorded. With many continuous shots, without many cuts in the editing, the raw truth is filmed.

People who have been persecuted for years and years and who only claim what every ordinary person on this planet claims: a home, medical care, education and employment. Nothing else. Nothing excessive, nothing absurd. And on the other hand, they are confronted every day with fanatical soldiers and settlers, nurtured by the rhetoric of hatred and the nationalist-patriotic crowns that have poisoned their souls and transformed them into anthropomorphic beasts that carry out orders and people.

No other land: another dimension

The documentary “No Other Land” does not attempt to manipulatively elicit the viewers’ emotions. Viewers who are aware of what is happening in the region, who have seen countless images of horror, especially on social media, who are indignant, who wonder how this genocide can be brought to an end.

This documentary attempts to give another dimension to this struggle. Another form of knowledge. That which is called humanistic knowledge. By documenting not only the events but also by introducing us to the people who take part in them, people whose fate has brought them face to face with the political brutality against which they put up a superhuman resistance, refusing with whatever strength, patience and stubbornness they have left to abandon their community, the lands where they were born, the friends and relatives without whom they could not bear the deprivations and hardships to which they are subjected every day.

The people who have learned to live in fear, terror, the anxiety of whether they will wake up alive the next day, the anxiety of which of their loved ones will be the next victim.

No other land: Defeat of all peoples

It is a documentary, “No Other Land” does not only aim to move the viewer. But to realize that the battle fought by these people is a battle that concerns all of us. A battle to save human beings, their dignity, the power to resist anything that violates their basic rights, the power to resist their violent uprooting, the power to resist anything that turns people into beasts.

The Palestinians struggle knowing that the possible defeat of their struggle will be a defeat for all peoples. And this in no way can leave any of us indifferent. At the same time, these days, the Palestinian Film Festival (here for more information https://athenspalestinefilmfestival.org) starts, which will take place from 17 October to 16 November 2024 at the Andorra, New Star Art and Trianon cinemas.

A call to get to know, through cinema, the people who are so mercilessly, so unjustly, so inhumanly affected. Let us not be indifferent. Let us respond to these calls and support them. It is not enough just to watch from the screens of our homes. We owe it to ourselves to “experience”.

Cinema gives us this possibility. Of “experiencing”. In this way we understand even more and thus we are constantly in a state of alertness that shields us against the current political propaganda.