I remember feeling similarly shell-shocked after For Sama. There is something devastatingly compelling about first person footage during wartime and with No Other Land, it wasn’t even officially a war.

Basel Adra is a young man living in Masafer Yatta, a West Bank settlement that Israeli authorities have been trying to eradicate for more than 20 years. They say it’s for military training grounds but conveniently, as the Palestinian villages are destroyed, Israeli settler villages spring up.

We will all have seen the news footage of the demolitions but here we get to know the people and see the unspeakable horror of your home being knocked down by bulldozers as you watch. It’s not just that though, it’s soldiers coming in and confiscating building tools and generators so you can’t rebuild, all your cars being confiscated, armed settlers coming in to lob rocks and shoot people, wells being filled with cement. It is a man who soldiers shot and paralysed from the shoulders down being left to live in a cave with his mother without a car or any reparation. It is schools being bulldozed and 70-year-olds who have lived there their whole life being told they are illegally occupying military land.

It’s hard to understand that Israelis, with a past of an attempted genocide against their people, are acting out some of the same oppressive tactics as the Nazis – confining people to a ghetto, requiring permits then continually denying them, confiscating belongings and gaslighting people and the world that somehow they are the victims.

We get a mix of quiet and beautiful filming of the families intercut with Basel’s frenetic desperate lo-fi filming and commentary during attacks. We see interest from foreign powers grow but no change on the ground. It’s a powerful documentation of the time and the resilience of the villagers who stay is clear. Goodness knows how many remain now, with the war starting just after the film ended.

I have some acquaintances who post pro-Israeli social media that casts all Palestinians as terrorists and I understand it is not a case of one side being right and the other wrong. Today’s news reports were about Peter Dutton refusing visas to fleeing Palestinians as “they might be Hamas terrorists and we won’t be safe in our beds.” It’s the same fear mongering that ignores the basic humanity of families who want a home and water and schools. I challenge anyone to watch this and not be moved by the tragedy.