Selected for this year’s Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, winner of the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2024 Berlinale (and just last week it landed the grand public prize of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Other Land has been selected as the Indie Film Site Network’s Network Advocate Award. Established in 2022 to highlight independent films each year that illuminate a humanitarian or environmental issue with a singular artistic vision. The top prize is awarded one million (1M) media impressions across the Indie Film Site Network, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, RogerEbert.com, Slant Magazine, Screen Anarchy and our site IONCINEMA.com. The Letterboxd folks are also contributing to the award.
Among the finalists for the 2024 IFSN Advocate Award we find Mati Diop’s Dahomey, Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck’s Gaucho Gaucho, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s Sugarcane. It’s worth mentioning that while No Other Land received a U.S. qualifying run in November – it is the only film among those mentioned above that is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Previous winners include All That Breathes (2022) and Kokomo City (2023). Here is the press release statement:
“There is no film more essential this year than No Other Land, a work of extant collaboration and vérité documentation that illuminates the devastating day-to-day destruction of Palestinian livelihood,” said Jordan Raup, co-founder of IFSN and editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Film Stage. “In presenting the IFSN Advocate Award to these four courageous filmmakers, we commend their bravery in capturing necessary images for the world to see and act upon. We implore a U.S. distributor to bear an ounce of this collective’s fortitude and distribute the film to as wide an audience as possible.”
Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families––the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to apartheid and a search for a path toward equality and justice.
About Indie Film Site Network
Indie Film Site Network (IFSN) is a collaboration between well-respected media outlets covering the most essential developments in independent and international cinema. IFSN, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, IONCINEMA.com, RogerEbert.com, Slant Magazine, and Screen Anarchy, was created with a mission to support film criticism and foster an ever-growing community of indie film lovers. For more information, visit indiefilmsitenetwork.com. For sales and partnership inquiries, contact sales@3rdimpression.com.