Jerusalem — No Other Land, a documentary about Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, has won the best documentary award at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
The film has been directed by Israeli-Palestinian activists. Shot in Masafer Yatta near the West Bank city of Hebron, the documentary follows a young Palestinian struggling with forced displacement as the Israeli army tears down his community’s homes to make space for a firing zone.
The Israeli army declared Masafer Yatta a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
After a long legal battle with Palestinian communities, an Israeli supreme court ruling in 2022 paved the way for the eviction of the area’s more than 1,000 residents.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
The West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinian as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
“No Other Land” premiered in February 2024 at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Panorama Audience Award for best documentary.
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar decried the Oscar as a “sad moment for cinema”. Zohar said the film’s Oscar win highlighted why his government was passing reforms aiming to guarantee public funds only go to “works that speak to the Israeli audience, and not to an industry that makes a career out of slandering the country at foreign festivals”.
The film industry has decried the reforms as an attempt to muffle liberal perspectives and views it as an attack on freedom of expression.
