Film about Israeli settler violence wins best documentary award at Berlin Film Festival

Israeli director Yuval Abraham and Palestinian director Basel Adra speak on stage after having received the Berlinale documentary award for 'No Other Land' during the awards ceremony of the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival. (AFP)
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Updated 25 February 2024
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Film about Israeli settler violence wins best documentary award at Berlin Film Festival

DUBAI: A documentary film about struggles faced by a West Bank village against Israeli settlers has won the Berlinale Documentary Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

“No Other Land” is an Israeli-Palestinian production, with Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham acting as co-directors.




“No Other Land” is an Israeli-Palestinian production, with Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham acting as co-directors. (Supplied)

“I'm here celebrating the award, but also very hard for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza,” Adra said at the ceremony on Saturday.

He urged Germany to “respect UN calls and stop sending weapons to Israel.”

His co-director, Abraham, added: “I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. And in two days we will go back to a land where we are not equal... this situation of apartheid between us, this inequality has to end.”

“No Other Land” had also earlier won an audience award.

In an earlier interview with Variety, Adra had said, “Yuval and Rachel, who are Israelis, came five years ago to write about things — Yuval is journalist — we met and we became friends but also activists together, working on articles about the area.” He further said, “And then we got the idea of doing this, of creating this movie.”


Highlights from Saher Nassar’s ‘Chronicles from the Storm’ exhibition in Dubai

Updated 27 February 2026
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Highlights from Saher Nassar’s ‘Chronicles from the Storm’ exhibition in Dubai

DUBAI: Here are three highlights from Saher Nassar’s ‘Chronicles from the Storm,’ which runs until March 18 at Zawyeh Gallery in Dubai.

‘Chronicles No. 1’

In his latest solo exhibition, the Palestinian artist “reimagines events that push past emotional capacity toward moral exhaustion, questioning the ethical certainty of the human spirit when faced with immense suffering,” according to the show catalogue, with works that “contemplate the devaluation of hope as a fundamental factor of human survival, sometimes revealed as currency for escape, sometimes seen in people resorting to their primal instincts to endure.”

‘Chronicles No. 8’

“Drawing from both personal and collective experiences, the exhibition unfolds as a layered reflection on how repeated trauma reshapes perception, belief, and the instinct to survive,” a press release for the show states. “Nasser translates lived realities into visual studies that move beyond immediate reaction. Rather than seeking resolution or catharsis, the works dwell in a state of moral exhaustion.”

‘Chronicles No. 3’

In “Chronicles from the Storm,” the UAE-based multidisciplinary artist is not attempting to offer answers, the press release suggests; rather, he is “bearing witness” and “inviting viewers to sit with unresolved questions and the uneasy persistence of the human spirit in the aftermath of the storm.” The works on show “carry a restrained intensity, resisting spectacle in favor of contemplation,” the release continues.