Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land to screen in Thunder Bay

Palestine Solidarity Thunder Bay and the Muslim Law Students Association of the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law will host a screening of Oscar-winner No Other Land, a documentary created by Israeli and Palestinian directors Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor.

Despite winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at this year’s Oscars ceremony, the film has struggled to find a distributor for a wide release.

“It’s a very important film, I think,” says Taina Maki Chahal, an organizer with Palestine Solidarity Thunder Bay. “Anyone who loves documentary film will find this film fascinating, not even for the content, but for the methods.”

The film tells the story of Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian Villages facing destruction and displacement by the Israeli Military, which has designated the area as a military firing zone.

Basel Adra, one of the film’s creators, lives in Masafer Yatta. The documentary chronicles his struggle to prevent the destruction of his home, and his unexpected friendship with Yuval Abraham, a sympathetic Israeli Journalist.

“It’s very much about law, and about how states use law for their own purposes and benefits,” Chahal explains.

Chahal believes that there are many good reasons why Canadians should care about this conflict across the ocean: she adheres to the position of the UN and human rights organizations like Amnesty International in understanding the situation in Gaza as a genocide.

“What is our role as citizens of the world to speak out on that?” She asks.

Chahal also sees parallels to Canadian history in the current conflict.

“The Canadian state is very familiar, and Canadians are familiar with how the state has been used to displace people, to harm people, to disallow people from living on their lands… so there’s a connection about settler colonialism that needs to be taken very seriously.”

The documentary will screen on Friday, November 7, at 7 p.m. at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law auditorium, and will be followed by a discussion.

Admission will be by donation. Proceeds will go to the community of Masafer Yatta.