The Academy Award for best documentary feature film went to “No Other Land,” a documentary made by a four-person Palestinian and Israeli team.
The filmmakers used their acceptance speeches to highlight the effects of Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. It comes on the heels of a tenuous Israel-Hamas ceasefire that saw the militant group release hostages who had been held in the enclave since the October 7, 2023, attacks.
Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who is a new father, said his hope for his daughter is that she “will not have to live the same life I am living now,” which he said involves constant fear of home demolitions and forced displacement in his community.
“We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people,” Adra said.
Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist, said the group of filmmakers made “No Other Land” because “together our voices are stronger” as Palestinians and Israelis.
About the documentary: The film tells of the continued demolition of Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages in the Hebron mountains of the West Bank where Adra and his family still live. As viewers see the demolition — the local playground torn down, his family moving their beds and other belongings into a cave, his brother shot and killed by soldiers, attacks by Jewish settlers — Adra and the rest of the filmmakers also show viewers a community trying to survive.
The filmmakers behind the documentary told CNN last month that American distributors have been hesitant to pick up “No Other Land,” despite widespread acclaim from critics.
Roughly 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes since Israel launched an expanded military campaign in the West Bank in late January, almost immediately after the Gaza ceasefire began.
More from the speech: Abraham, who is an Israeli journalist, said in his speech that he and Adra “live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basal is under military laws (that destroy) his life and he cannot control.”
He added that there is “a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people” before accusing foreign policy in the United States of blocking that path forward.
“Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basal’s people are truly free and safe?” he said. “There is another way.”
CNN’s Leah Asmelash, Jeremy Diamond, Abeer Salman and Kareem Khadder contributed reporting.
