Synopsis: This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.
According to IMDb, the film has won 62 awards and nominated for 28 more. The film has been screened at many film festivals locally and internationally. As of now with the limited release in U. S. theaters, there is no U. S. distributor, but there are 24 other countries that have picked it up for distribution.
This film is not an easy one to watch. The viewer sees the people living in villages, many families with children, in humble dwellings. Many have lived in the region since the 1830s according to the villagers. It is distressing to see the armed soldiers arrive claiming to have permission from a court, etc. to demolish the dwellings and other structures. The Palestinians are unarmed. There seems to be hardly enough time to remove their belongings (or livestock) from the homes and other structures. It is a crushing feeling to see families seek shelter in a cave in this current day and time for safety from all that they face. It is also very hard to watch toddlers, and other small children appear traumatized as armed soldiers arrive, and the bulldozers destroy what they know to be their homes, schools and playgrounds.
Basel Adra is a young Palestinian from Masafer Yatta, and since childhood has known of the challenges the community has endured. He has a memory from childhood when his father was protesting the actions taken against them and his subsequent arrest. Basel is an activist and began documenting the life around them with the technology available to them and there is plenty of cellphone camera footage. Despite being shaky in some instances, there is video of military altercations, archive footage, and TV newscasts. The audience can also view footage of the families living in caves, fixing dinner, watching television, nestling in their blankets, or enjoying the evening breeze after dinner on the makeshift porch.
While the families are making do after an expulsion, the military returns with more bulldozers if they see a village being formed. Structures are destroyed again and if that does not hit someone hard at this point in the film, the footage of a well is being filled with concrete and water lines cut with a chainsaw should give us all pause. “Water is a human right” yells a villager on screen.
Basel Adra (Palestinian) meets Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins in the documentation for several years of this expulsion. This film is a Palestinian-Israeli collective directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor and produced by Fabien Greenberg & Bård Kjøge Rønning. 2024 / Palestine and Norway / Arabic, Hebrew & English / 96 minutes
The film has a limited theatrical release in the United States, with one of the opportunities to view the film in Austin, TX on February 7th, 2025, at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar.
Source: Antipode Films, IMDb,
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