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An Oscar statue is pictured at the red carpet of the 96th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on 9 March 2024. Picture: PEDRO UGARTE / AFP
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar on Monday decried a “sad moment for cinema” after an Oscar win for “No Other Land”, a documentary about Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The film, which was directed by Israeli-Palestinian activists, won the best documentary award at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
“Instead of presenting the complexity of our reality, the filmmakers chose to echo narratives that distort Israel’s image in the world,” Zohar said in a post on X.
Shot in Masafer Yatta near the West Bank city of Hebron, the documentary follows a young Palestinian struggling with forced displacement as the Israeli army tears down his community’s homes to make space for a firing zone.
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“Freedom of speech is an important value, but turning the defamation of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not creation -– it’s sabotage against the State of Israel,” Zohar added.
The Israeli army declared Masafer Yatta a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
After a long legal battle with Palestinian communities, an Israeli supreme court ruling in 2022 paved the way for the eviction of the area’s more than 1,000 residents.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
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The West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinian as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
“No Other Land” premiered in February 2024 at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Panorama Audience Award for best documentary.
Zohar said the film’s Oscar win highlighted why his government was passing reforms aiming to guarantee public funds only go to “works that speak to the Israeli audience, and not to an industry that makes a career out of slandering the country at foreign festivals”.
The film industry has decried the reforms as an attempt to muffle liberal perspectives and views it as an attack on freedom of expression.
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