‘No Other Land’ is the best documentary of the year according to the Oscars. The problem is that in the US nobody can see it

No one escapes that The Oscars They are not only recognition in the form of awards for some of the most outstanding films of the year, but an authentic commercial maneuver that gives the box office to films of all kinds. But … what happens when a movie has not found distribution? This is the case of the winner with the Oscar for the best documentary feature film, ‘No other Land’.

A movie about Palestine. This documentary is led by four Palestinian activists (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szo, two of them Israelis) in co -production with Norway and premiered at the last Berlin Festival. In it, we focus on the life of a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, a West Bank region. We can see the Gradual destruction of your homelandwhere Israeli soldiers break down houses and evict their inhabitants. He will establish friendship with an Israeli Jewish journalist, which highlights the contrast between the lives of both.

No distribution. The special of ‘Not Other Land‘It is that the film has no distribution in the United States due to the conflict of its theme. In our country, for example, it was seen in cinemas last November and is currently in the Filmin catalog (among another twenty of countries in the world). This has greatly limited its reach in the Oscar country, has opened a new debate about the power of commercial censorship, much more powerful than openly political, and raises the irony that a film like this has reached few Americans beyond academics who have been able to see it for their condition of voters.

An anomaly. In one Interview with Variety Before the nominations, its creators talked about the anomaly of the state of the distribution of the film, which saw as “something completely political. Obviously, we are talking about the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, and it is very unpleasant. The film is very, very critical with Israeli policies.” And they added: “Part of the reason we made the film is to reach people who may not support what we do, to whom the film could challenge. (…) If you have a large distributor, you reach people of various political opinions and with various degrees of knowledge about Israel and Palestine. And those are exactly the people we want to show the film, because it is how we can boost the change.”

It is not the only one. There are other documentaries that are facing this problem in recent times. ‘The Last Republican’, for example, is a portrait of Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman who became one of the great critical voices against Donald Trump. Josh Braun, one of the directors of the company that distributed the film, confessed to The New York Times That “with the result of the elections, I think there is a question about some political content films.”

Unusually apolitical Oscar. All this occurs in the context of a Oscar delivery unusually apolitical, where comments from presenter and guests that allude to the situation of the country are not usually lack. However, this year, Donald Trump has been avoided openly, although guests have alluded to sensitive issues such as diversity, immigration, and conflicts that affect the country, such as those of Palestine and Ukraine. Jimmy Kimmel, for example, presented in 2017 the gala coinciding with the first year of Trump’s previous mandate, and filled his monologue with references to the president. Conan O’Brien, however, has a less political style, and those references were missing, as in most aseptic speeches.

In Xataka | Oscar’s “ghost” category: it exists but it is so demanding that there have never been films that opt ​​for it