Berlin 2024: ‘No Other Land’ director reveals death threats due to calling for ceasefire
After his documentary, No Other Land, won the ‘Berlinale Documentary Film Award’ at the Berlin Film Festival, co-director Yuval Abraham has revealed he’s received death threats after calling for a ceasefire in his celebratory speech.
The film has been made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, and tells the true story of Abraham, an Israeli journalist, who befriends young Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who lives on the West Bank and also co-directed the production. No Other Land explores the differences between their upbringings, despite only growing up half-an-hour away from one another.
In his victory speech on February 24th, Abraham told the crowd at the Berlinale: “We are standing in front of you. Now, we are the same age. I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. And in two days, we go back to a land where we are not equal.”
He continued: “I am under civilian law; Basel is under military law. We live 30 minutes from one another but I have voting rights. Basel does not have voting rights. I am free to move where I want in this land. Basel, like millions of Palestinians, is locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, has to end.”
Following the ceremony, Abraham took to X to share a clip of his speech along with the caption: “Our film No Other Land on occupied Masafer Yatta’s brutal expulsion won best documentary in Berlinale. Israel’s channel 11 aired this 30 second segment from my speech, insanely called it ‘anti semitic’ — and I’ve been receiving death threats since. I stand behind every word.”
They wrote: “We are painfully aware of the unbearable dynamics of institutional inertia in the cultural sector in Germany, and we recognise the current limits imposed on speech. We want to hold the festival and ourselves to a higher standard.”
Additionally, at the awards ceremony, director Ben Russell, who lost out to No Other Land in the ‘Berlinale Documentary Film Award’ category for Direct Action, wore a keffiyeh as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinian population.
In response to the ceremony, German government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said in a press briefing on February 26th: “It is unacceptable that… the terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October was not mentioned.”
Her remarks were supported by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who “agrees that such a one-sided stance cannot be allowed to stand”.
Following the comments made by German politicians, Mariëtte Rissenbeek from Berlin Film Festival said in a public statement: “We understand the outrage that the statements made by some of the award winners were perceived as too one-sided and, in some cases, inappropriate. In the run-up to and during our festival, we made it very clear what the Berlinale’s view of the war in the Middle East is and that we do not share one-sided positions. However, the Berlinale sees itself – today, as in the past – as a platform for open dialogue across cultures and countries.”
Rissenbeek continued: “We must therefore also tolerate opinions and statements that contradict our own opinions, as long as these statements do not discriminate against people or groups of people in a racist or similarly discriminating way or cross legal limits. From our point of view, it would have been appropriate in terms of content if the award winners and guests at the Award Ceremony had also made more differentiated statements on this issue.”
She concluded: “The Berlinale stands for democracy and openness. We explicitly oppose discrimination and all forms of hatred. We want to exchange ideas with other social and political institutions on how to conduct a social discourse on this extremely controversial topic in Germany – with the inclusion of international perspectives – without individual statements being perceived as anti-Semitic or anti-Palestinian. We have to face up to this controversial topic – as an international film festival and as a society as a whole.”
The Berlin Film Festival have also announced they have opened an investigation into antisemetic social media posts that were made on their account on February 25th. “The Berlinale condemns this criminal act in the strongest possible terms and has deleted the posts and launched an investigation,” they explained.
Prior to the beginning of the Berlin Film Festival, a group of their contracted workers condemned the event for their silence on the Israel-Gaza conflict and shared an open letter calling for an “immediate ceasefire”.
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