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Documentarying settler colonialism: Azraf Chowdhury, ‘The lens of resistance: Using No Other Land (2025) and The Settlers (2024) as contemporary documentaries to understand the Israeli settler project’,  Journal of Global Faultlines, 13, 2, 2026, pp. 155-179

05Nov26

Abstract: This article investigates how contemporary documentary films construct political, visual, and narrative understandings of the Israeli settler project, which is an ongoing settler-colonial project that is sustained by territorial expansion, displacement, and the structural domination of Palestinians. While scholarship has examined settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel, less attention has been given to how contemporary documentaries narrate and visualize this evolving project. The research question is: how do the documentaries No Other Land (2024) and The Settlers (2025) narrate and visualize the expansion of the Israeli settler project, and what do they reveal about the broader political, ideological, and colonial structures that sustain and normalize settlement expansions? Analyzing No Other Land (2024) and The Settlers (2025), the study analyzes how first-person, collaborative, and long-form documentary practices challenge dominant narratives, expose settler violence, and highlight human security concerns such as personal, economic, and community insecurity. Analysis of No Other Land, directed by Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor, showed that the film visualizes settler colonialism as an ongoing structure rather than an isolated event. Scenes of home demolitions, filmed with handheld cameras, created emotion and gave the film a sense of authenticity. The documentary foregrounds Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) through the portrayals of families who refuse to leave their homes, while exposing the collaboration between Israeli settlers and soldiers during attacks on Palestinian homes. In contrast, The Settlers, directed by Louis Theroux, interrogates the ideological and political forces driving settlement expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The study concludes that contemporary documentaries serve as powerful tools of political critique and public understanding of the Israeli settler project. Together, they demonstrate how documentary film can shed light on the mechanism of settler colonialism, challenge dominant Israeli and Western framing of this conflict, and contribute to broader debates on occupation, settler violence and resistance.


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