Living Under Occupation

No Other Land (2024) - Adra, Ballal, Abraham, Szor As I write this non-review-review of a documentary on the West Bank in the Occupied Territories, Israel is engaging in military conflicts with Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen. Iran just launched retaliatory bombing of the airbase in Israel.

Going through what's been happening for the past year is going to be futile because it will need detailed context with how we got here; on the verge of World War III, it would take way too long. As I cover New York Film Festival, which this film is part of, there's a boycott happening against the event because many of the sponsors have been deemed to be pro-Israel donors.

I say this is not a movie review because I'm about to lay down what happens in this very personal documentary and explain what it means at this time and place in the world, not as much about how the film was made and put together. This article is from the perspective of a person living in New York, married to a woman of Jewish descent: this is how I see it from my perspective and no one else's. So please keep that in mind as you read along.

No Other Land, a documentary by a group of Palestinian and Israeli activists, shows what it's like to be living under an apartheid state, in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. Five years in the making, it documents the ongoing destruction in Masafer Yatta, an area consisting of a small group of Palestinian villages in the South of the West Bank. It focuses on Basel Adra, a young activist (serving as one of the directors of the film) who grew up in the village and has been documenting Israeli incursions since he was a child.

He meets Israeli journalist Yuval (Yuval Abraham who is also credited as a director) in 2019, covering land siege and demolition of the Palestinian inhabitants’ brick and mortar homes on the dry hills by Israeli military, which cites the Israeli Supreme Court ruling that Israel has the right to the land in the Occupied Territories as a justification, to build a military training ground. Confrontations ensue.

But it's been like this forever. Basel's dad has been arrested many times in the past. The homes get destroyed, then rebuilt (with great difficulty I might add), destroyed and rebuilt.

They live in constant fear of being evicted or being arrested. The military cuts their water lines, confiscates their generators, and pours cement into the wells; all these actions are documented by Basel and others. Basel, along with his father, are known to the Israeli military officers as troublemakers. They are constant targets for harassment and threats.

Yuval is rightfully enraged by all of the things he sees, done by the Israeli military, by his name. He is an Israeli. At the end of the day, he gets to go home by breezing through checkpoints, using the Israeli citizen only lanes. He gets to shower and sleep in a cushy bed.

On the other hand Basel, about the same age as him, with a law degree, can't get a job, other than jobs doing manual labor. He needs to tend the gas station when his father gets arrested for protesting, since that's the sole source for the family income.

Yet, it's Basel who comforts Yuval, who tells him to calm down. "You are too enthusiastic. You want to see the change overnight, it won't come tomorrow." After years of living under occupation, people in the Occupied Territories become realists.

The network of resistance is done via phone; neighbors communicate that there's a raid or bulldozers coming to this town or that house, as the military seemingly selects their targets at random. They mobilize to stage a demonstration.

A neighbor gets shot while being evicted from their house. He is paralyzed from the shoulders down. They can’t afford to stay in the hospital. Their home destroyed, they move into the cave (the region is known for its natural caves).

With a small camera, Basel records everything. He uploads it to the web and hopes to get the words out of the struggle. That's all he does, constantly looking at the phone. Hey, two thousand people liked my post.

Their activism sometimes bore fruit and gave a moment of reprieve, like that time Tony Blair toured the region and saw their situation first-hand. And the Israelis backed down their expansion temporarily. Basel's father has a picture with him to prove it.

When they are chilling at night, sharing hookah, the conversation leads to other things between two men. "Do you see yourself having a family?" Yuval asks. Basel hesitates to answer. He is too tired. The years of struggle weighs him down. He is married to his phone, always looking at the likes and responses to his posts about the daily lives of his struggle and the news. He is tired. There's nothing else he can do.

Dominating the Middle East news cycle for a year has been the ongoing indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza since October 7th of 2023 by Israel, in retaliation of the surprise attack from the Hamas militants in Gaza Strip. This emboldened the zionist Israeli settler movement in the West Bank.

Accompanied by Israeli soldiers, the settlers start violently attacking the homes in Masafer Yatta. Basel records his cousin getting shot by a settler. His father gets arrested. The movie ends in early 2024. Basel and thousands of other stories like his still go on. People's suffering is staggering; so is their resilience.

Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor capture what it's like living under the occupation, that is so immediate and telling. The systematic injustice and oppression are well documented in No Other Land. Everything we take for granted, such as a roof over our heads, running water, and electricity, is in constant threat. The scarcity of economic opportunities, healthcare plus the restrictions of movement, makes the everyday life of people in the West Bank extremely challenging.

Social media serves a very different purpose in the Occupied Territories. Palestinians really count on getting the footage out to the world to show what’s really going on. I had no idea how much they depend on the pressure tactics by us on politicians to improve their lives.

It seems no distributor is picking up this film because of its 'sensitive' nature and fear of offending the Israeli government and its powerful lobby groups, even though No Other Land won the awards at this year’s Berlinale. But injustice is injustice. These people in the film are not actors. The oppression is real. The racist vitriol is real. And I feel it is our (people who've seen the film) duty, to advocate for their plight.

Inability to Change Minds

The Viewing Booth (2020) - Alexandrowicz  

Israeli filmmaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz's documentary Viewing Booth tells the harsh reality and ultimate failure of so-called activist filmmaking in the belief that images can change minds of those who matter the most. And it's sobering realization.

Alexandrowicz invited 7 American University students for his 'viewing booth' sessions: a studio room with monitors showing 40 published online video clips of the Occupied Territories in Palestine - a half of them from B'Tzelem - a Human Rights organization based in Israel and the other half from pro/conservative Isreali groups (such as videos put out by IDF). The subjects are asked to freely play any clips they choose to watch- they can pause at any moment and rewatch them and provide live commentaries while watching them. He films these sessions and the subjects' reactions and their comments. Enter Maia Levy, a pro-Israeli student from American Jewish household. The film turns out Alexandrowicz focusing on her because it's people like her that the filmmaker wants to reach with his films, not anti-occupation crowd or activist types (not preaching to the choir, so to speak). It's her predisposition of seeing the images - the real footages shot by Palestinian citizens in the Occupied Territories which can be seen by anyone online, that interests him.

Maia is an inquisitive young woman who thinks of herself as objective observer of the conflict, a Jew living in America. But watching those short clips of unedited footage of everyday horrors in the Occupied Territories - an announced nightly raid of masked, heavily armed Israeli soldiers going into Palestinian household, waking up sleeping children and photographing them and its aftermath - children breaking down in fear, or a settler harassing Palestine women and children in cages, calling them unspeakable names, or Israeli teens throwing rocks at a Palestinian woman videotaping them and soldiers just standing by in the background, not responding to the cries for help, etc, although she sympathizes with the oppressed, she is quick to find many faults in what she is presented with: without proper contexts, these clips are manipulative or worse yet, staged to make Israel look bad. Because of her upbringing or background of whatever, she is predisposed to question what she sees and distrust whatever is deemed by anti-Israel.

It is also telling that Maia says that she is influenced by TV shows like Netflix's Fauda and reality shows that everything is already fabricated and you can't always trust these 'real' footage's authenticity. Is she telling the truth or is it a justification for her predisposed condition? but in equal footing, she also doesn't like what IDF puts out - Palestinian kids coming up to Israeli soldiers and hugging them and the soldiers giving them food. She thinks that's corny and detrimental to portraying Israel as being good.

The filmmaker asks her again to come in after 6 months of their first session. Because obviously she is the emblem of the target audience and why he is in the profession in the first place - to change their belief system with his films. She is educated, smart, curious enough to seek out those clips by B'Tzelem even though many of them will be uncomfortable and depressing to watch. It's very much like some of my so-called liberal minded friends watching Fox News to see 'what the other side is like, so I will know how to defend myself'.

Alexandrowicz thinks these things aloud to understand clearly where the divide lies - particularly for me as an outside observer, seeing these clips immediately makes me think, "wow, this is their everyday reality," rather than "this looks staged." Obviously, those activists films, documentaries like 5 Broken Cameras by Guy Davidi & Emad Burnat isn't going to change my mind because I'm already with the anti-occupation crowd. But The Viewing Booth concludes with the sobering realization that there is a limit to what images, let alone films, can change someone's engrained belief system, even if it's not fictional film but filmed reality. The intermediary of the mere 'lens' between Maia and the reality already puts a divide that she will not cross. The Viewing Booth is a sobering film that bruises the ego of any self-congratulatory, circle jerky liberal documentarians who genuinely think they can change the world. Sorry, you can't reach the ones who matter the most.

A Wall Between Us, Literally and Figuratively

Omar (2013) - Abu-Assad

With Omar, this is the second time Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad is being nominated for an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film category. His previous effort, Paradise Now ended up winning a Golden Globe only. Even if you take away the political aspect, the film works as a superb noir that is as compelling as The Departed or any number of great undercover policiers of the West. Abu-Assad is a great storyteller. He doesn't have to resort to a satire to illustrate his point. Everything feels very real and immediate in Omar. And the 30 feet concrete security wall speaks more volumes about the absurdity of the situation people engage themselves in the Occupied Territories than any political soapbox speech.

If Paradise Now served in telling the world how the Occupation and its debilitating effects make suicide bombers out of people who have been robbed of their dignity, Omar digs deeper into its effects on a personal level and shows how it tears the fabric of the community apart.

The film starts with Omar (Adam Bakri) climbing up the Isreali security wall, dodging bullets parkour style, to get to his girlfriend Nadja (Leem Lubani)'s house, located on the other side of the wall, still in Palestinian territory. This is a normal, daily routine for him. This is the life of people living in the Occupied Territories in the West Bank. He is in love with Nadja, a younger sister of Tarek (Iyad Hoorani) who is the ringleader of a resistance group and Omar's best friend. Omar can't ask her to marry him because she is still in High School and hasn't earned Tarek's respect yet. But he has been saving money, working at a bakery, day in and day out. A man can dream at least, can't he? Omar, Tarek and their childhood friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat) practices their sharp shooting skills and constantly renew their allegiance to the cause against the Occupation.

They put their skills to the test and chooses an Israeli army barrack from a distance and Amjad shoots and kills a soldier. In their minds, this is the beginning of their long awaited dive into freedom fighting. The next day, Israeli soldiers are everywhere and after a long chase through the narrow alleys and over the rooftops, Omar gets captured. He is tortured and coerced. His desperate yell: "I'll never confess!" will be used against him in the Israeli military tribunal and he will serve at least 60 years in prison, if he doesn't tell them who pulled the trigger. He will never see Nadja again. They will never make it to Paris for their honeymoon.

He is released under condition of delivering Tarek (the Israelis think it's Tarek who pulled the trigger). Omar tells Tarek everything and they plan an ambush. Tarek will consider Omar's intentions on Nadja after the ambush. Apparently, Amjad asked for Nadja's hand too. The planned ambush doesn't even take off the ground. With their superior military might, Israelis capture Omar again in minutes. With little damning information from snide Israeli intel officer Rami (superb Waleed Zuaiter), Omar has to make everything right the second time against insurmountable odds.

The film's tragedy is amplified by its young, attractive characters who have a wall between them, literally and figuratively. Omar works as a heart pounding thriller as well as an affecting love story that will leave you a lot to chew on. 

Omar is scheduled to open in NY (Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Angelika Film Center), LA and other cities on February 21 followed by a national release. Please visit Adopt Films' website to find out more.

'The only place I can feel human emotion is in cinemas now' Hany Abu-Assad Interview

Hany Abu-Assad's Omar, a political thriller and a love story set in the Occupied Territories is Palestine's official entry for this year's Oscar for The Best Foreign Language Film. This is Abu-Assad's second nomination in that category since Paradise Now (2005). As a lover of cinema, Abu-Assad not only talked about Israeli-Palestinian issues but also the global cinema influences into making Omar and the fiction as the pure form of expressing human condition in our media soaked society.

First of all, congratulations on being nominated for the Academy Award for the second time.

Thank you.

You've made Rana's Wedding, Paradise Now and Omar in the Occupied Territories. How hard is it to shoot a film there logistically and politically?

Life under the occupation is always difficult. Filmmaking (for me) is part of life and it's extra difficult because you have less freedom than usual - freedom of movement, even freedom to tell your ideas. Funnily, this time, I didn't have any problems from the authorities. I think, because of one simple reason - if they gave me trouble, every journalist in the world would ask me how my film shoot was there. So no, I have no stories to tell.  (laughs) They are very happy now because there were no stories to tell. I am happy because I had my freedom to shoot.

So it has changed since you've started making films over there.

Yes, for me. But not for normal people who live there. You have to make it clear.

Yes of course.

No, the situation is still the same for normal people. For me yes, because it's better for them to be easier on me. They were very smart about this.

Not that there aren't funny moments in your film, but Omar feels more grounded in reality than, say, Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention where he uses humor in political satire and parody. Your methods are much more direct. Do you think it's more effective or is it just your preference?

Yes. You always do what you like. You do what you admire. If I made a list of ten movies I like by other filmmakers, they would be all realistic movies with realistic characters. An example? One of the last movies I saw was Nebraska and I was so stunned by the movie because it's so simple and real. It felt, even in black and white, more real than anything. I love that. When you admire movies, you want to do the same, you know? For me, it's the movies that resemble reality. Sure, others love satires and taking more abstract approach. It's 'you do what you like'. I like movies that are grounded.

I couldn't help noticing that Omar is very much a film noir. If you disregard the whole political situation, I can see the same story taking place in New York or Boston easy. Where did you draw your inspirations from?

You are completely correct. Omar is a love story and a political thriller. The thriller element is very strong . It's a genre movie. In a thriller, there is a constant search for 'the traitor'. That's where the tension is created.

In that genre, there are three traditions: The American, French and Egyptian. Americans made some great thrillers -- No Way Out, The Firm, The Three Days of Condor....  French do it completely different as in Le Circle Rouge and Le Samurai. Egyptions also have a great tradition of making thrillers. There is Stranger in my House (with Omar Sharif), Al Karnak.... Now, Americans do best in plot driven thrillers, French do well with its characters inner conflict with contrast between closes ups and wide shots and Egyptians put in human elements in thrillers. Usually to keep the tension high, characters don't do ordinary stuff, like going to the bathroom or eating. They don't make jokes. Those elements are usually cut out. But Egyptians succeeded in keeping in those human touches while maintaining tension. I wanted to do a movie where i can express my love for the American, French and Egyptian thrillers. This is how I made Omar because it's kind of universal combining those thriller traditions I love. Going back to your question. Yes it is a film noir, using those traditions. But I hope the film stands out as its own.

So you are a big film buff. you watch a lot of movies.

Sure. I think every filmmaker should be like that. Funny enough, the only place that I can express my emotions is in cinema. Nowadays, real life has become so fake: you encounter so much fake emotions I can't watch news anymore. The only place I can feel human feeling is in cinemas now. Because we live in the consumerist society where everything is being consumed, there is no interest for human beings. Even though cinema is fiction, I feel the only way you can feel human emotions is through your imaginations.

As a film buff myself, I agree with your sentiment.

The most moving and poignant moment in Omar is after thing went down badly, Omar's inability to climb over the security wall, which he could easily before. Could you tell me about what's going on with him in his head?

It's completely a scene about motivation. If there was a motivation behind, you can climb walls, jump, whatever. If there is no motivation and you know you are going to your end, because going to the other side means that you have to confront what you did, to confront your sin. It means you have to pay the price for your sin, to be punished.  It's something he has to do, but it's also something he is dreading.

How was the reception of the film in both Palestine and Israel?

In Palestine, excellent. Everyone who saw the film loved it. They came out with the mixed feelings, happy and sad which was good because I love this kind of endings. Surprisingly, the reception in Israel was good. I was expecting more...

More of a backlash?

Yeah. But a lot of people appreciated it. I was surprised. I think it's a good sign. Obviously I expected some haters who wouldn't like its politics. But usually, good movies challenge your ideas- moral judgment or political judgment. A good movie should challenge your thoughts. Even if you don't agree about the politics, you can still appreciate it because it's a good filmmaking. When you decide to judge my movie because of pure political reasons, I don't mind that judgment. Again, surprisingly, this time, most of the reactions I got were appreciations. This means that the whole society is changing, public is changing. I don't know... it's good. It's a good sign.

I have a two part question. First, can a film make a difference in the political arena?  And is the two state solution possible?

The first one is an easy one. I think movies can play a role in people's awareness and this awareness can cause for change. But the main goal of me making movies is to raise awareness. It's to raise awareness in Palestinians about themselves and the world about Palestinians. Again, I didn't make this movie to change anything. I wanted to make a movie that will survive the conflict. You want this movie to work when the conflict ends in twenty years or two years. Because the conflict will die. You don't want your movie to die with the conflict. So yes. The main goal of this movie is not really change things. Spreading awareness is a side effect but its goal is to challenge human beings in any time and place about their perception of life. I mean really challenge it, your thoughts about how your life looks like. It can be looked at differently. If I was there and made these mistakes, what should I have done differently? This is more important to me than changing political situations.

I don't know when the occupation will end. But there is hope and I am hopeful. I don't think two state solution is a realistic one. There are too many settlers and too many settlements so it's impossible now. You have to remove half a million people and that won't happen. The solution is one state. It will take time for people to realize that that's the only solution.

Good luck at the Oscar. It's been an honor to meet you.

The honor is all mine.

OMAR is scheduled to open in NY (Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Angelika Film Center), LA and other cities on February 21 followed by a national release. Please visit Adopt Films' website to find out more.

Deprived of Dignity

Paradise Now (2005) - Abu-Assad

Rarely one sees a good political thriller that humanizes its characters. Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assan does an amazing job at portraying two childhood friends/would be suicide bombers from Nablus, the Occupied Territory. The film is neither a by-the-numbers, robotic Paul Greengrass actioner with the apologist bent nor a satirical black comedy.

Two underemployed friends- sad eyed Said (Kais Nashef) and happy-go-lucky Khalid (Ali Suliman) are chosen to be martyrs. They will blow themselves up in Tel Aviv tomorrow. Just like that. They are not to talk to anyone about it. They seem to be not only resigned to the fact but giddy about the prospects, especially Khalid. After some technical snafu, they finally tape their video statement wherein Khalid gives his mom the tips where to buy water filters. They get half-hearted congratulatory remarks by the leaders, haircut, dinner, suits, the works. With bombs strapped to their chest, their plan gets thwarted by sudden appearance of Israeli Military vehicles at the border fence. Khalid safely gets back in time but Said is left near the border and gets lost. He unwittingly becomes a fugitive.

The film buys some time for two men to think about their options. The appearance of Suha (luminous Lubna Azabal of Incendies, Here), a woman from a well to do family, returning from Europe shakes things up a little bit. Paradise Now is a great balancing act, avoiding pitfalls of heavy handed political statement without ever losing sight on showcasing the mindset of the people whose dignity has been taken away by the occupation.