Oscar-winning Palestine-set documentary No Other Land is being released directly onto online platforms in the US after major streamers refused to release the film, according to its makers.
The filmmakers say they had talks with Mubi but “couldn’t cooperate” with the company because of its funding from Sequoia Capital, the investment firm with connections to an Israeli defense technology company.
News of the October 20 US online release was announced in an Instagram post by Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, who directed the film along with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. In the post, Abraham says the film is being released “directly and independently after unfortunately all of the major streamers and TV channels refused to show No Other Land in the United States, despite winning the Oscar.”
Abraham added: “The one streamer who was interested, Mubi, we were talking to them for months and at the end we unfortunately learned that this streamer is receiving money from a company, Sequoia Fund, which is also funding Israeli weapon companies. So we couldn’t cooperate with them. But by doing it this way we can make sure that all of the proceeds go directly to the Masafer Yatta community.” (Masafer Yatta is the West Bank region in which the film chronicled the demolition of Palestinian houses by the Israeli military.)
In a widely reported statement Adra said: “This film shows the reality of Israeli occupation and oppression against Palestinians — but that truth apparently didn’t fit the narrative that big US streamers wanted to promote. We talked to MUBI for months, and initially thought our film had found its home, but in the end we learned that they were accepting a huge investment from Sequoia Capital.”
“In addition to being unethical,” Abraham added in the statement, ”it made no sense to us that they would take our film showing Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and then also partner with a company contributing to that oppression.”
No Other Land premiered at the Berlinale in 2024, winning the Panorama audience award and Berlinale documentary award. It went on to win nearly 70 awards on the festival circuit and was named best documentary feature at this year’s Academy Awards, making it the first full-length documentary to win an Oscar without a US distributor attached.
The film was self-distributed theatrically in the US in January this year and grossed more than $2.5m.
Mubi, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has drawn industry criticism since Sequoia led a $100m investment in the UK-headquartered streaming platform, producer and distributor in May.
In August, Mubi CEO Efe Cakarel said in an open letter responding to the criticism that suggestions of complicity in the war in Gaza are “fundamentally at odds with the values we hold as individuals and as a company.”
“The profits MUBI generates do not fund any other companies in Sequoia’s portfolio,” the letter added. “Our returns go to Sequoia’s limited partners — institutions such as universities, foundations, and pension funds — not to other Sequoia-backed businesses such as Kela. Any suggestion that our work is connected to funding the war is simply untrue.”
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