Film through law. Law through film.
Law on Film podcast explores the rich connections between law and film. While law is critical to many films, films also show how the law is perceived and portrayed. Each episode looks at a different film. What does the film get right about the law? What does is get wrong? And what does the film tell us about the larger social and cultural context in which law operates?
Latest Episode
No Other Land
Guests: Omer Bartov & Lisa Hajjar
No Other Land (2024) is the Oscar-winning documentary that shows the brutal destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank. Recorded between 2019 to 2023, the film tells the story of Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist, who has been protesting the Israeli army’s destruction of homes and eviction of villagers. Adra is assisted by Yuval Abraham, a Jewish Israeli journalist. (They are also two of the film’s four directors). To Adra and other Palestinians, the Israeli army is destroying their homeland. The Israeli army, however, maintains that the inhabitants are on land that the military needs for live-fire military training and that the evictions have been duly authorized by Israeli courts. The situation turns violent—Adra’s cousin is shot by Israeli soldiers in the days after the Oct 7 attacks—and Adra himself is endangered by his efforts to record the evictions and protests. The film provides a penetrating look not only at a Palestinian community in the West Bank but also at the plight of those being forced off their land--with literally nowhere else to go. [Editor's Note: Since the recording of this episode, Odeh Hathalin, a Palestinian activist and contributor to the film, was shot and killed in a village in Masafer Yatta by an Israeli settler.]
