The collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers involved the porcelain war, sugarcane, black box diaries and soundtracks in a coup.
Other lands, a film about Palestinians fighting to protect their homes from demolition by Israeli forces, have not won an Oscar for their best documentary features.
The collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers won the Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Black Box Diary and Soundtrack in a coup on Sunday.
Produced between 2019 and 2023, the film follows activist Basel Adora as Israeli soldiers risk arrests to document the destruction of their hometown, Masafayatta, which is torn apart for use as a military training zone on the southern tip of the West Bank.
Adora’s plea falls in deaf ears until he becomes friends with Yubal Abraham, a Jew-Israeli journalist who helps him amplify his story.
Accepting the award, Adora said that no other land reflects the harsh reality that Palestinians have endured for decades.
“About two months ago I became a father. My daughter hopes that she doesn’t have to live the same life as me now, and she is always afraid of settlers, violence, demolishing her home, and the fact that my community lives and enjoys every day.”
He also called on the world to “take serious action to stop injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.”
#OSCARS2025 @@basel_adra: “We call on the world to take serious action to stop injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” #NOOTHERLAND pic.twitter.com/2yvfryOawc
– Palestine (@palestine_un) March 3, 2025
“Together, our voices are getting stronger.”
Abraham said they made the film because they came together and their voices were strong.
“We look at each other. The heinous destruction of Gaza and its people must end. The Israeli hostages must be brutally filmed and released in the crime of October 7th,” he said.
Abraham criticized the Israeli regime that destroyed Adora’s life, saying there is a “political solution without ethnic superiority, the rights of the people of both our people.”
But US foreign policy has helped block that path, he said.
“We can’t see that we are intertwined. If the people in Basel are really free and safe, can my people really be safe? There’s another way. It’s never too late for life. There’s no other way,” he added.
The film struggles to find a distributor in the US, so the maker arranged for a week-long run at Lincoln Center in November to qualify for the Oscars tonight.
Sunday’s Oscar is the latest famous honor that no other lands have won. It also won the Audience Award and Documentary Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Non-Fiction Film.
The film relies heavily on video camera footage from Adra’s personal archives. He captures Israeli soldiers bulldozing village schools and filling wells with cement to prevent people from reconstructing.
It shows residents united together after Adora, who photographed Israeli soldiers who shot a local man protesting the demolition of his home. The man is paralyzed and his mother struggles to take care of him while living in the cave.
. @yuval_abraham: Looking at @basel_adra, you see the brothers, but we are unequal. We are free under civil law, and we live freely under military law that destroys his life, and there is another path that he cannot control…
– Assal Rad (@Assalrad) March 3, 2025
Over half a million settlers live in the occupied West Bank, home to about 3 million Palestinians.
Although settlers have Israeli citizenship, Palestinians live under military control with Palestinian authorities that control population centres.
Major human rights groups have described this situation as apartheid. Apartheid is an allegation rejected by the Israeli government, deeming the West Bank a Jewish historical and biblical comfort and opposing the Palestinian state.
