Dr. Maytha Alhassen
speaker
40 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Dr. Maytha Alhassen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Okay, everybody, this week, you and I are connecting the dots between Rotten Tomatoes, Kiefer Sutherland, and the Middle East. I know, I know. How are all of these things connected?
Well, we're going to find out with the co-host of NPR's Code Switch, B.A. Parker, and Dr. Mehta Alhassan, a professor who's also written and produced for Hulu's hit series, Rami. Parker, Mehta, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Hello. Hey. All right. Okay, so here's a question for y'all. Which one of you thinks that you have what it takes to make an Oscar-winning film?
I love that. I have a master's in screenwriting. Listen, I have an undergraduate degree in film. Do you see me?
Well, that kind of independent filmmaker empowerment was on full display at last weekend's Academy Awards. Many of the top prizes went to indie films, from the Best Picture winner, Onora, to the first ever independent film to win Best Animated Feature, Flow. And finally, the subject of today's show, the winner for Best Documentary Feature.
The self-produced documentary.
Really quick, No Other Land is a documentary about Palestinian activist Basil Adra and his community of Masafaryada in the West Bank. Thank you to the Academy for the award. And in the film, Masafaryada is being demolished by Israeli forces to make way for a military training ground, driving many Palestinians out of their homes and villages.
So Basel decides to document the expulsion on the ground, hoping to share it with the world and bring an end to the violence that his community is facing every day. And also I'll say there's a really good chance that you, yes, you listening, have not seen this movie.
That's because barely any American theaters are screening it, which is a little wild because ever since it debuted at the Berlin Film Festival last year in 2024, it's been getting universal acclaim. I'm looking at Rotten Tomatoes right now and it has a 100% rating. So what is it about a universally acclaimed movie that US film distributors don't want to touch? Is this a kind of soft censorship?
Is there a history to this sort of thing happening in Hollywood before? And if documentary film is supposed to speak truth to power, what happens when power doesn't want to hear it? So, Parker and Maytha, let's start with the facts. The fact being that this film has not received wide distribution rights in America. Why do you think that is?
Is there something controversial about the subject of the film or is something else going on here?
One of the notes that I wrote down when I was watching the film is that very frequently when homes are being bulldozed, when people are being rounded up, children are watching this. And that is not always the perspective that people are seeing perhaps when they turn on a news broadcast.
Seeing someone's lived experience through their eyes, from their perspective, is something that not really all news really can do. That's kind of the opposite of what news is. Documentary is very different. I could see how there might be some people who might take issue with that.
You know, Parker, I guess there are a couple reasons why this film might not be getting wider distribution or picked up by a streaming service, for example. One could be an economic reason. I read a quote from one distribution executive saying it's, quote, solely an economic decision and that streamers don't want documentary content. Who is this? Who is this exact? Unnamed, unnamed, unnamed.
What I'm trying to understand here is, though, is, is it the money that distributors are worried about or is it the subject of the film itself? Are they worried it's too unsellable or too political or what?
Yes, that's right. Back in October 2024. And Netflix says that that was because their three-year licensing agreement for these films expired. But you're absolutely right. That could definitely raise some eyebrows.
Okay, so we've been talking about why people wouldn't want to distribute the film, but I want to talk just a little bit about why they would. And there's a long history of films that No Other Land is actually like. It's a co-production between two Palestinian and two Israeli filmmakers.
And that's one way, in the past, Palestinian storytellers have been able to get their work out in the world to have Israelis be a part of the project. And one moment that really highlights why
this has perhaps been the case for so long is that when No Other Land screened in Berlin at the Berlin Film Festival last year, 2024, the German Minister of State for Culture was seen clapping for the film during a standing ovation for And there was backlash to her clapping. And then her response to that was to put out a statement saying that she was only applauding the Israeli filmmaker.
That's not how that works. That is famously not how applause works. She said that she was only applauding the Israelis, not the Palestinians, even though they all made the film together.
And this apparent need for Israel's co-sign on Palestinian projects was really on full display at the Oscars last week when one of the Israeli co-directors, Yuval Abraham, gave his acceptance speech immediately after the Palestinian director.
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