‘No Other Land’ Review — A desperate plea that knows it won’t be heard

A review of the new documentary, in UK theatres now

I wasn’t much of a fan of The Brutalist. I haven’t gotten to write about it yet, and I’m not sure I’m going to bother, since I don’t really enjoy being the critic who tells everyone, “This thing you all like is actually bad.” That second half, though… rough stuff.

I do like Brady Corbet, though, and I especially like that Brady Corbet used his new platform to call for a U.S. distributor for No Other Land at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. The documentary is shortlisted for the Academy Awards and has picked up a number of honors on the awards circuit, and though it’s out right now in the U.K., there’s still no plan to release it in America.

That’s shameful… and the movie itself seems to have anticipated it.

No Other Land is a film about the friendship between a Palestinian filmmaker named Basel Adra and an Israeli journalist named Yuval Abraham. (They co-directed the film along with two other activists, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor.) For years, Basel has been documenting the systematic destruction of Masafer Yatta, a village in the West Bank. For years, Israeli soldiers have been destroying homes there; they bring bulldozers in without warning, demolishing…