“No Other Land” is playing in U.S. theaters after winning an Academy Award for best documentary. Photo by Getty Images
By Olivia Haynie
March 18, 2025
Last week, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner threatened to terminate the lease of a local independent theater, O Cinema, for screening No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary about a group of Israeli and Palestinian activists trying to save the West Bank village of Masafer Yatta from demolition.
In a newsletter sent to Miami Beach residents, Meiner called the film “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.” O Cinema currently rents its theater and receives funding from the city. On Wednesday, the city commission will vote on a proposal to end the lease and the funding.
This incident is the latest controversy for the film, which doesn’t have an official US distributor and has been relying on self-distribution to independent theaters to get the film seen across the United States. With the help of independent booker mTuckman media, No Other Land has been a popular pick in the world of arthouse cinemas.
“There’s not as many distributors that are taking risks on films that are a little smaller or maybe a little more challenging,” Beth Barrett, the artistic director of the Seattle International Film Festival explained in a phone interview. “Our role as exhibitors is to create those experiences that allow people to find those films.”
The Seattle International Film Festival, which offers year-round programs at four theaters in the Seattle area in addition to an annual festival, had been trying to book No Other Land since its premiere. Barrett said they were not concerned about the film engendering controversy.
“We’ve really established ourselves as being a place that will screen films that will let you make your own decisions,” Barrett said.
“In this particular case, No Other Land is bringing out a whole unique audience who’s curious about this subject but also bringing them to the cinema and sort of reinforcing that community aspect of being in the cinema,” Barrett added.
“We are actually cautious and think through those issues in advance, but this is one that just seemed so essential to the conversation,” said Emily Kass, the executive director of The Chelsea, an independent cinema in Chapel Hill, NC. “And it has been our highest attended film since we opened it.”
Kass said she felt fortunate The Chelsea, unlike O Cinema in Miami, does not receive government funding and instead relies entirely on the Chapel Hill community for financial support.
Ben Godar, the executive director of Varsity Cinema in Des Moines, Iowa, said the fact that No Other Land was a collaborative project between Israelis and Palestinians may have made it more attractive to viewers, who perhaps saw the film as articulating a middle-ground approach in a polarized environment.
“When people see that, I think maybe that hits them in a different way than if it felt like this is strongly from this point of view or that point of view,” Godar explained.
The Varsity Cinema, which previously has screened explicitly political films like How To Blow Up a Pipeline, appeals largely to “hardcore film buffs,” Godar said. Even so, No Other Land has brought in audience levels that have rivaled those of mainstream blockbuster films.
“It was like our second weekend that we also had Paddington at the time and it outsold Paddington,” Godar said.
“We identified a film that we thought was important, that was critically acclaimed and very intentionally sought it out to bring it to our audience,” he said.
Samuel Eli Shepherd contributed reporting.
