Doc Talk Podcast: ‘No Other Land’ Filmmakers Blast Israel’s Treatment Of Palestinians: “We Need To End Apartheid”

Matthew Carey

10 December 2024 at 6:45 pm·2-min read

In the past 10 days, the documentary No Other Land has surged to Oscar frontrunner status after racking up an impressive array of awards: top honors from the Gotham Awards, critics groups in Los Angeles and New York, the IDA Awards, the European Film Awards, and an award from the National Board of Review.

The feature directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers offers a rare ground-level view of what life is like for Palestinian villagers in a rural West Bank area who have faced an expulsion order from the Israel Defense Forces that goes back decades. The IDF claims it needs the land as a training zone, but the filmmakers found a document in Israeli government archives suggesting that was a ruse and the real purpose was to push out Palestinians in favor of Jewish settlers.

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Two of the directors who appear on camera throughout the film – Israeli Yuval Abraham and Palestinian Basel Adra – join the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss the film, which has attracted no shortage of controversy, beginning at Berlin Film Festival. At that event, No Other Land earned the top prize for documentary, but an acceptance speech given by Abraham and Adra – in which they called for a ceasefire in Gaza and Adra implored the German government to end weapons exports to Israel – was attacked by some German politicians as antisemitic.

In the Doc Talk conversation, the filmmakers reject the antisemitism accusation. They mince no words on their feelings about Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, calling it apartheid. And they question why much of the international community has endorsed the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin but criticized the court for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Pod co-hosts John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor, also discuss whether the film’s outspoken advocacy for Palestinians could trigger a backlash among some Oscar voters.

That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk, a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios. Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.

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