It took Palestinian director Basil Adra 30 hours to arrive in Berlin from his home in the West Bank to attend the premiere of his documentary film “No Other Land,” at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), the day before yesterday.
In contrast, Yuval Abraham, the Israeli director who also participated in the film, only needed four hours to reach the German capital from his home, which is only half an hour away from Basil’s house.
The film, which the two directors spent five years preparing, documents Basil’s struggle to preserve his village, “Musafer,” at a time when the village is subjected to repeated attacks by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank.
The film sheds light on the parallel reality that the two friends live in: Yuval, with his yellow Israeli license plate that allows him to travel anywhere, and Basil, who lives trapped in a small area where Palestinians groan.
Basil said: “I must request a visa, then travel from the West Bank to Jordan, and continue crossing checkpoints and borders, then arrive in Jordan, and then travel by plane.”
While Yuval said: “We are 30 minutes apart under the same Israeli control, but for Bassel, it probably took 30 hours to get here, and for me, it takes 20 minutes to get to the airport.”
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war, and has expanded settlements there since then. The Palestinians want the West Bank to be part of their independent state in the future.
The film’s scenes have become familiar enough to onlookers, from the young Israeli soldiers guarding the bulldozers, the injured sons, the mothers and crying children, and the cement poured by workers on barren lands.
But the film’s ensemble, which also includes Palestinian photographer Hamdan Bilal and Israeli cinematographer Rachel Szur, also shows the impact of such differences on the lives of the two friends.
Although they are good friends, Yuval cannot hide the shame he feels because of the freedom he enjoys, and his friend Basil does not feel it.
Basil cannot always hide from his friend the state of anger he feels because of this situation.
The situation in the West Bank has worsened in the past two years. Last December, the United Nations said that about 300 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, in addition to the arrest of about 5,000 others, and warned that the human rights situation was rapidly deteriorating.
Director Yuval Abraham, whose grandmother was born in a concentration camp in Libya run by Germany’s Italian fascist allies, believes that “the film’s message is also directed at Germany, a staunch supporter of Israel.” He said: “I know that the Germans feel guilty about the Holocaust, and I think they should feel guilty… but do not use this feeling of guilt as a weapon now to harm Basil’s family, or to support the war in Gaza that destroyed the entire place.”
