‘No Other Land’ Announced as Winner of the 2024 Indie Film Site Network Advocate Award
NEW YORK, NY (November 25, 2024) – Indie Film Site Network (IFSN) has announced Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s essential, urgent documentary No Other Land as the recipient of the 2024 IFSN Advocate Award. The award was established in 2022 to highlight independent films each year that illuminate a humanitarian or environmental issue with a singular artistic vision. The top prize is awarded one million (1M) media impressions across the Indie Film Site Network, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, IONCINEMA.com, RogerEbert.com, Slant Magazine, and Screen Anarchy. Letterboxd, the popular social network for cinephiles, is also contributing to the award.
Finalists for the 2024 IFSN Advocate Award are Mati Diop’s Dahomey, Gregory Kershaw & Michael Dweck’s Gaucho Gaucho, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s Sugarcane, which will each be awarded 100K media impressions each across IFSN.
Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families––the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to apartheid and a search for a path toward equality and justice.
“There is no film more essential this year than No Other Land, a work of extant collaboration and vérité documentation that illuminates the devastating day-to-day destruction of Palestinian livelihood,” said Jordan Raup, co-founder of IFSN and editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Film Stage. “In presenting the IFSN Advocate Award to these four courageous filmmakers, we commend their bravery in capturing necessary images for the world to see and act upon. We implore a U.S. distributor to bear an ounce of this collective’s fortitude and distribute the film to as wide an audience as possible.”
No Other Land premiered at the 2024 Berlinale, where it won the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2024 Berlinale, and subsequently played at CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival, among others. It received a U.S. qualifying run in November at Film at Lincoln Center and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
In his recent review, Hammer To Nail’s lead critic Christopher Reed wrote “In No Other Land, a new documentary from a collective of four Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers—Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor—we take a front-row seat at the destruction of a village in the West Bank, Masafer Yatta. The reason for its razing? The Israeli army ostensibly needs the land for training grounds. The fact that people have been living there for generations is immaterial. We’ll learn at the end of the film that the real motivation is far more sinister… The cameras train their lenses squarely on the plight of those in Masafer Yatta, with the representatives of the Israeli government never more than villains. This no doubt can open the film up to criticism of one-sidedness—or to arguments about the absence of any hint of Hamas or other groups seeking to kill Israelis—but its goal is to give voice to the voiceless. The truth doesn’t always set you free, but it can at least make one question the narrative. No Other Land does that quite well, and the result is gripping and extremely disturbing. Where can these people go to be safe? Nowhere. It’s a hopeless situation, with no end in sight but the worst possible outcome.”
The IFSN Advocate Award, created by the network as part of its mission to celebrate and support indie film, is selected by a jury of writers and editors from IFSN sites, with each site nominating a finalist and deliberating to award a winner. Previous IFSN Advocate Award winners include D. Smith’s Kokomo City and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes.
About Indie Film Site Network
Indie Film Site Network (IFSN) is a collaboration between well-respected media outlets covering the most essential developments in independent and international cinema. IFSN, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, IONCINEMA.com, RogerEbert.com, Slant Magazine, and Screen Anarchy, was created with a mission to support film criticism and foster an ever-growing community of indie film lovers. For more information, visit indiefilmsitenetwork.com. For sales and partnership inquiries, contact [email protected].
Post a Comment
