No Other Land and The Only Girl in the Orchestra won the Oscars in the documentary categories last night at the 97th annual Academy Awards. The win for No Other Land provided one of the highlights of the ceremony as winners Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Hamdan Ballal—a collective of Palestinian and Israeli journalists and filmmakers—took the stage to accept the award for their documentary that chronicles the Israeli army’s ongoing occupation of Palestine, including forcible housing evictions, in Adra’s community of Masafer Yatta.
The winners took a big moment to address the plight of Masafer Yatta and other communities enduring violence. “Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honour for the four of us and everybody supported us for this documentary,” said Adra on the Oscar stage. “About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope to my daughter that she will not have to live the same life I’m living now, always fearing settlers’ violence, home demolitions, and forcible displacements that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation. No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist, as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”
Abraham, an Israeli journalist who befriended Adra while investigating the situation in Masafer Yatta, addressed the U.S. government’s foreign policy and posed a challenge for anyone watching. “We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other,” said Abraham while accepting the award. “The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end, the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, [who] must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. And, you know, why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined, that my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way.”
In addition to bringing a note of political urgency to the Oscar telecast, No Other Land’s win marked a major moment as an Oscar contender that made it all the way to the stage without a U.S. distribution deal. The film’s overt politics, combined with the shaky marketplace for documentaries, meant that nobody stepped up with a deal for theatrical and streaming even though No Other Land had a sensational festival run that began with a pair of prizes at the Berlin Film Festival last February. The film kicked off its North American leg at TIFF and Telluride in the fall, where it continued to be among the most talked about films of the year. No Other Land’s sales agent Cinetic Media ultimately helped the team self-distribute the film. The run made it the top grosser at the box office among the nominated docs.
On the shorts side, Selena Gomez and Samuel L. Jackson presented the Oscar to The Only Girl in the Orchestra director Molly O’Brien and producer Lisa Remington. The Only Girl in the Orchestra offered a loving tribute to Molly’s aunt, double bass player Orin O’Brien, who broke the gender barrier as the first woman in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
“As Orin O’Brien, the star of The Only Girl in the Orchestra, likes to say, music helps us organize our emotions, and there are a lot of emotions that need organizing these days,” O’Brien said while accepting the Oscar. “Film does the same thing. Art makes order and gives meaning out of the chaos we’re living through.”
The Only Girl in the Orchestra is streaming on Netflix. It marks the fourth win for the streamer in the category after The White Helmets, Period. End of Sentence, and The Elephant Whisperers.
The exceptionally long Oscar broadcast ultimately saw Sean Baker’s Brighton Beach-set sex worker dramedy Anora as the big winner of the night. It took five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress for ingénue Mikey Madison. Three Oscars went to Brady Corbet’s independent epic The Brutalist, including Best Actor for Adrien Brody as a Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust. Two wins went to Jacques Audiard’s narco opera Emilia Pérez, including Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña for her turn as a lawyer tasked with facilitating a mob boss’s gender affirmation surgery.
The animation categories, meanwhile, reflected the Academy’s global scope. In the Best Animated Feature category, the Latvian cat movie Flow, directed by Gints Zilbalodis, marked a notable win for independent animation. On the shorts side, Iranian filmmakers Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi (In the Shadows of Cyprus) expressed shock at their victory, having only handed in Los Angeles hours before after a hard-fought visa application.
The awards hosted by Conan O’Brien featured numerous extended musical interludes beginning with a rousing turn by Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. The night included tributes to James Bond and Quincy Jones, although at the expense of performances of the Best Original Song nominees including “Never Too Late” from the documentary Elton John: Never Too Late. Ironically or fittingly, the documentary win provided one of the most electric moments of the night.
