In the spotlight
Hamdan Balal & Basel Adra- No Other Land
Film still: No Other Land, dir. Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Balal, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra
Camera as a weapon of proof
On May 4, 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court made a controversial decision. The judge designated the area surrounding the village of Masafer Yatta—located just outside Hebron in the West Bank—as a military training area. The on-going demolition of homes, schools, and shops, which has been occurring for years, was shifted into a higher gear. Four thousand Palestinians face the threat of eviction by bulldozers and soldiers armed with tear gas and flash grenades.
Filmmakers Hamdan Balal and Basel El-Adara live in the area, a short distance from one another. They have made documenting the violence against their community their life’s mission. “I first studied accounting, but when I finished my degree and saw the destruction of my village, I decided to become a photojournalist,” says Balal. “A striking image says more than a thousand words. Up until now, we’ve mainly shared our photographs on social media, but to reach more people, we are now working on a documentary film.”
The film project No Other Land only really got off the ground when the two Palestinians met Yuval Abraham and Rachel Shor—two journalists of the same age, but of Israeli descent, and they decided to make the film as a collective of four. “We became friends and had many discussions about the political situation,” says El-Adara. “As a Palestinian journalist, you have limited freedom of movement. We often have to wait six to eight hours at checkpoints before we are allowed to continue. I have also been beaten up once, and when I filed a complaint, it was simply swept aside.”
Photo: Basel Adra (left) & Hamdan Balal (right) at IDFA 2022
As Israeli citizens, Abraham and Shor are free to go wherever they want. But the real importance of their collaboration goes far beyond that, says Balal. “It is important that someone documents us while we document the injustices. That increases the credibility of our footage. We also want to show the public the conditions Palestinian journalists have to work with.”
“We must be ready at all times. As soon as a message is sent to the community’s WhatsApp group, we pack our things and head over. We always work with multiple cameras so that we capture everything from different angles, both close-up and from far away. If a camera is damaged or confiscated, we have plenty of spare material.”
Doing journalistic fieldwork is not without risk. In the area, there are regular shootings and explosions are extremely common. El-Adara's father was arrested when he demonstrated against the demolition of a school, and a friend was shot in the neck when his generator was confiscated and he offered resistance.
“We now have hundreds of hours of footage,” says El-Adara. “Not only depicting the aggression of the Israeli army, but also everyday life. With this, we want to show that people do live here and that this is not an empty no man's land, as claimed by the Israeli court. The film camera is our weapon of proof.”
Despite the wealth of material collected by the four filmmakers, the recordings will continue in 2023, because the Israeli army is expected to ramp up its activities even further. But the filmmakers simultaneously feel an urgency to complete their editing and post-production. “We want to release our film as soon as possible, preferably at IDFA, but also broadcast it on Al Jazeera and other television stations,” says Balal. “We want to put pressure on the government and educate Israelis who live elsewhere and may not know what is happening here, to inform them about what their children are doing on duty. We want to show the world how we are being isolated and our living environment is being destroyed. Crimes against humanity are being committed here.”
By Edo Dijksterhuis
Film still: No Other Land, dir. Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Balal, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra