No Other Land has won Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards. The film tells the story of the Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta in the south of the occupied West Bank, where villages have faced forcible displacement and violence. The film was co-directed by Palestinian lawyer, journalist and filmmaker, Basel Adra and photojournalist and farmer Hamdan Balal.
Both Basel and Hamdan are alumni of On Our Land – Protecting Cultural Heritage in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a project which was supported by the Cultural Protection Fund. On Our Land trained young people as researchers to gather testimonies from older generations about cultural heritage in their communities. As part of the project, Basel and Hamdan learned about cultural heritage safeguarding, using oral history interviewing techniques, videography and photography, and producing storytelling outputs from data.
Dr. Aurélie Bröckerhoff, Research Fellow from the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University, which led the project, takes up the story:
‘Basel joined as a 19-year-old from at-Tuwani in 2017 and worked with us all the way through the project. Hamdan from Susiya joined the work a little later, in 2021.
We want to express our gratitude to the Cultural Protection Fund. Your long-term commitment to our research has allowed us to sow many seeds of creativity in the young people of Masafer Yatta (and now beyond), and we hope to be able to share many more important updates about how the Cultural Protection fund has enhanced the capacities of the local youth and their communities, facilitating transformative change in the process. We know we have been incredibly fortunate to be able to conduct this work for so many years.’
Find out more about On Our Land and No Other Land.
No Other Land will have its network premiere on Channel 4, Tuesday 4 March at 11.15pm.
