Brattleboro’s second annual Palestine Film Series opens Sunday, March 23, with the Oscar-winning Best Documentary No Other Land, a devastating window on the continuing Israeli settler violence, land theft and forced displacement of Palestinians from their West Bank villages.
No Other Land is one of four films in this year’s series that give audiences an opportunity to experience diverse stories about the lives of Palestinian people. The series is presented by Southern Vermont for Palestine (SVT4P) and Latchis Arts.
Although it has won more than 45 top documentary prizes worldwide including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, No Other Land has struggled to find a U.S. distributor and has been screened in only a handful of U.S. cities.
In an interview with IndieWire, Palestinian co-director Basel Adra stressed the need for a broader release in the U.S. “I still believe that if there will be a change it must come from [the U.S.], from this power,” he said. “We really want people to see what their money is doing to us.”
According to film series coordinator Shana Frank, “Southern Vermont for Palestine understands the vital importance of making the stories of Palestinians accessible to as many people as possible, especially now, as relentless violence spreads from Gaza to the West Bank, where Israeli settlers and soldiers are attacking Palestinian families with impunity, destroying homes and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians residents,” she said.
“We are pleased to partner with Latchis Arts to bring these critically acclaimed films to those in our region who want to learn more about Palestinian people and their lives.”
Other films in the series include an Oscar-shortlisted documentary created by filmmakers in Gaza during the genocide, and a feature film by Oscar-nominated director Farah Nebulsi.
The Palestine Film Series runs on four consecutive Sundays from 4-6 p.m. at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro. Admission is by donation. Audience members are welcome to stay after the films for facilitated conversations.
The four feature-length films presented this year are:
No Other Land (2024), Sunday, March 23: Filmed over five years by a collective of two Palestinian and two Israeli journalists/filmmakers/activists, No Other Land chronicles the resistance of villagers in the West Bank community of Musafer Yatta to the ongoing violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers and soldiers – violence that continues today in Musafer Yatta and throughout the West Bank.
From Ground Zero (2024), Sunday, March 30: Oscar-shortlisted for best international feature film, this collection of 22 short films (3-7 minutes each) made by Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza portrays the steadfastness of the human spirit and the will to live in a time of peril and devastation. The film presents a mix of genres: documentary, fiction based on true stories, animation, experimental video art.
Walled Off: View from Banksy’s Walled Off Hotel (2023), Sunday, April 6: Produced by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Kweku Mandela. Banksy’s Walled Off Hotel, art gallery and history museum overlooking Israel’s apartheid wall serves as an anchor for this eclectic documentary, which spotlights “the creative ways that the Palestinian people and their supporters have been using the arts and other means of nonviolent protest to resist occupation,” writes journalist Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats.
The Teacher (2023), Sunday, April 13: A dramatic film by Oscar-nominated director Farah Nebulsi, is the story of a Palestinian teacher grieving the loss of his teenage son and struggling to reconcile his commitment to political resistance with his support for two students. Meanwhile, an American couple begs for the return of their son who was kidnapped while serving in the Israeli military.
No Other Land will also be screened at the Latchis for a full week starting Friday, March 21, during regularly scheduled showtimes.
Southern Vermont for Palestine is a grassroots group of volunteers working locally to educate the public about Palestinian freedom. The group is part of the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, a statewide collective of organizations and individuals supporting justice in Palestine.
For more inforamation: sites.google.com/view/svt4palestinefilmseries/home
