Distributors Stay Wary of Israel-Palestine Docs Despite Audiences

By Elena Vasquez

"No Other Land" grossed $3.6 million worldwide without a distributor. Major streamers and most independent distributors still refuse to release documentaries about Israel and Palestine, according to filmmakers and executives who spoke to IndieWire, even as self-distributed titles post solid box office numbers.

The Oscar-winning "No Other Land," from filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, went the self-distribution route with consultant Michael Tuckman. The team's new film "NAZA" cut out the middleman immediately this month and has already passed half a million dollars domestically after just two weekends in a handful of theaters. The Guardian plans to put "NAZA" online in November.

What are audiences actually doing?

At New York City's Film Forum in late 2025, the Oscar-nominated drama "The Voice of Hind Rajab" and the documentary "Holding Liat" screened at the same time. One is about a Palestinian girl trapped under Israeli military fire. The other, which won the top Berlin documentary prize a year after "No Other Land" did the same, profiles one Israeli family's efforts to recover their daughter kidnapped in the October 7 attacks.

No mass protests followed. The films were not programmed consciously side-by-side, but they ran in conversation rather than in opposition.

Other numbers point to real demand:

• Watermelon's "American Doctor" has made over half a million dollars domestically this year, entirely from art houses and independent venues.
• "Holding Liat" has grossed $80K but screened at over 70 festivals in 25 countries and 40 U.S. cities, excluding community and campus screenings.
• "Coexistence, My Ass," about an Israeli comedian, made $37K in a couple of weeks in theaters.

The takeaway: audiences are showing up when the films reach screens at all.

Why do distributors hesitate?

"Hind Rajab" was released by WILLA and Watermelon Pictures, an upstart distributor specializing in Palestinian-led stories. It eventually landed on Hulu after its Oscar nomination. Watermelon's other titles have found no streamer homes and have faced social media ad suppression similar to what reportedly hit the documentary "Musk." "Holding Liat," which went live on digital earlier this month, is available only as a TVOD rental.

"We genuinely feel the industry has not caught up with the audience," Watermelon Pictures co-founder Hamza Ali told IndieWire. "There is an appetite for a lot of these films. We're demonstrating it. But we're still not getting major streamers to come on for a lot of our films. I'm not going to name names, but the one exception was 'The Voice of Hind Rajab,' which was nominated for an Academy Award, and to be quite honest, that's what it took to get it placed was a nomination."

"Holding Liat" co-director Lance Kramer said distributors wanted "some difficult-to-articulate balance" while Liat was still in captivity, asking how the film would end and what its angle was. The filmmakers stopped those conversations. One publicist told them the best they could hope for was to keep their heads down and avoid being canceled.

Do the feared risks materialize?

No, according to Kramer's count. "I never encountered a single thing that merits that fear," he said. Out of more than 300 screenings of "Holding Liat," one protest occurred. Kramer spoke with the protesters. "It was the theater's right to play the film and the protesters' right to protest the film. That's what happens in a democracy."

Co-director Brandon Kramer counters the industry's framing directly: "The contradiction that we experienced was that these companies kept telling us it's too divisive, it's too polarized, and what we were experiencing in over 100 of them was the exact opposite. They weren't fueled by divisiveness, they were exhausted. They want opportunities to experience films from different perspectives."

Theaters share the apprehension. "Theaters that would be very adventurous with their programming pre-pandemic, now they have to be careful with what they're putting on screen in bringing in revenue," said Watermelon's head of distribution Justin DiPietro. "It's much easier to put an extra screen of 'Spider-Man' than it is to take a risk on a really good documentary."

Is anyone distributing these films?

Richard Lorber, CEO of Kino Lorber, disputes the claim that distributors will not touch the subject. He said Kino put in an aggressive bid for "No Other Land" before it self-distributed. The company has released the Palestinian documentary "Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk" and the Israeli narrative drama "Yes."

Lorber cautions that self-distribution is not a model every filmmaker can replicate. "There are a lot of other filmmakers that might try to pursue that same path and might come up empty-handed or find the outcome very disappointing, not just financially, but in terms of reaching the audiences they want beyond the echo chamber of a small cohort of audiences," he said. "They need us, but we also need them."

The "NAZA" rollout now functions as a test case. Its early grosses suggest the ceiling for these films is higher than distributors assume — provided someone is willing to book them.