Rejected

The filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning Palestinian documentary “No Other Land” spent their many months on the awards circuit calling out American distributors for being unwilling to offer the film a U.S. theatrical distribution deal, telling IndieWire last November that “distributors are afraid to engage with the topic of Israel and Palestine.”

Since being released theatrically independently and winning the Oscar, the film is now finally being made available on streaming. The filmmakers have chosen to again release the movie independently, making it available for on-demand digital purchase and rental via Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube, as they announced on Instagram earlier today. But, as it turns out, “No Other Land” did have interest from a major U.S. distributor to release the film via SVOD streaming, but the filmmakers “rejected” the offer.

That distributor was MUBI, and in a press release, co-directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham said they ultimately turned down the deal over the long-running controversy concerning MUBI’s $100 million investment from Sequoia Capital.

“This film shows the reality of Israeli occupation and oppression against Palestinians — but that truth apparently didn’t fit the narrative that big U.S. 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,” Adra said in a statement.

“In addition to being unethical, 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,” Abraham added.

MUBI declined to comment when reached by IndieWire.

MUBI secured a $100 million investment from Sequoia Capital in May 2024, at which point backlash slowly grew over the fact that, in addition to MUBI (and numerous other tech companies and investments), Sequoia had also invested in Israeli military tech start-up Kela. The start-up was founded by Israeli intelligence veterans in 2024 following the October 7 terrorist attacks, as well as two other Israeli defense companies.

Since that investment became public, filmmakers and even employees internally have called on MUBI to return the investment and accused the art house streamer and distributor of being complicit with genocide in Palestine.

In August, CEO Efe Cakarel put out a lengthy statement stressing that Sequoia is merely a minority investor without oversight over programming, editorial, or financial decisions; that Cakarel remains the majority shareholder in MUBI; and that any assertion that MUBI’s profits would go to fund other companies in Sequoia’s portfolio were untrue. It also clarified that Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, who came under fire for Islamaphobic social media posts, had no involvement with MUBI operationally or strategically. The company also put in place an “Ethical Funding and Investment Policy” about establishing criteria for future investments.

But the perception and backlash has persisted. Last month, a Los Angeles film festival dropped MUBI as a presenting sponsor over the controversy, and the “No Other Land” news is the latest example.

Though technically released without the aid of a formal distributor, “No Other Land” had a lengthy theatrical run, thanks to aid from other independent exhibition partners, and the movie has since made $3.6 million worldwide at the box office, making it one of the higher-grossing documentaries of the year.

Adra wrote a guest column for IndieWire back in February about the crisis still taking place in Masafer Yatta. A co-director on the film, Hamdan Ballal, was attacked and arrested back in March. In September, Adra revealed that his home in the West Bank was raided by the IDF. And two months ago, a collaborator on “No Other Land,” Awdah Hathaleen, was killed in the conflict.