'No Other Land' & a Raucous First Amendment FightThe campaign to protect Miami Beach's O Cinema has activated Hollywood: 'The city would be an international laughing stock'
A scrappy group of independent filmmakers and documentarians team up with an arthouse theater to take on government bigwigs . . . You might think you know how this story ends, especially in these bruising early months of 2025. But for once, this is a story where the good guys — and crucially, the First Amendment — actually win. On Wednesday morning the mayor of Miami Beach, Steven Meiner, abandoned his proposal to evict the local independent theater O Cinema, which operates out of a building owned by the city. Meiner had accused the theater of programming an “antisemitic” film in No Other Land, which you may remember is also this year’s Oscar winner for the best documentary feature. Meiner backed down during a “raucous” hearing at the Miami Beach City Commission, where the Miami Herald reports “the vast majority of attendees opposed Meiner’s proposal.” He also faced outrage from more than 700 members of the film community, who signed an open letter this week that opposed the mayor’s “attack on freedom of expression, the right of artists to tell their stories, and violation of the First Amendment.” Signatories include Oscar-winning documentarians like Jimmy Chin, Michael Moore and Ezra Edelman, in addition to Miami native Barry Jenkins.
Alfred Spellman, a Miami Beach native and film producer, was at the meeting, speaking alongside his business partner Billy Corben. The founders of the film production company Rakontur, Spellman and Corben consider O Cinema “family” and have been rallying support and international press for the theater ever since Meiner first proposed shutting it down last week. “I told the mayor and the commission at the meeting that obviously the city would lose and the city would be an international laughingstock,” Spellman told me Wednesday afternoon, just hours after the meeting concluded. “We were very focused on the simple issue at stake here, which is freedom of speech.” (Spellman and Corben spoke at length about the situation with friend of The Ankler Thom Powers over at Pure Nonfiction, if you’re eager to hear more). No Other Land, directed by a team that includes Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra, chronicles decades of struggle within the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta, located in the West Bank. After premiering to raves at the Berlin International Film Festival, it wasn’t picked up by a U.S. distributor, becoming a cause celebre among critics and other filmmakers who had managed to see it. At the New York Film Critics Circle dinner in January, where No Other Land won one of its many critics prizes for best documentary, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet ended his speech for best picture by telling the starry crowd, “It’s time to distribute No Other Land.”
Though I’m told there were some offers from smaller distributors including the indie outfit Kinema, the No Other Land team opted to self-distribute, partnering with Cinetic for publicity and international sales and working with independent film veteran Michael Tuckman to book theaters. As of last weekend No Other Land was playing on 138 screens in North America, including the O Cinema. Though its $165,000 gross last weekend may seem minor, it was ahead of best pic Oscar nominees like A Complete Unknown and The Brutalist and cracked the box office top 25. Mr. Mayor’s Misstep
In his failed attempt to punish the non-profit theater that showed No Other Land, Meiner has put a much bigger spotlight on the film, something the filmmakers themselves seem well aware of. “Banning a film only makes people more determined to see it,” co-director Abraham said in a statement when Meiner’s efforts first began. “When this mayor uses the word antisemitism to silence us, Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality for all, he is dangerously emptying it out of meaning. Once you witness Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta it becomes impossible to justify it, and that’s why the mayor is so afraid of our film. It won’t work.” The swift rallying of hundreds of members of the film community feels like a promising sign, the first green shoots of Hollywood meeting some small portion of the precarious national moment we face. That group may want to stay ready for their next challenge; the documentary The Encampments, about the Columbia University Gaza protests last spring, has announced plans for a nationwide theatrical release later this month. One of its key figures is Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the protests and legal U.S. citizen, who continues to be held in a Louisiana detention center and has yet to be charged with any crime. It’s rare for movies to run into free speech challenges that actually hit the true definition of the First Amendment — speech that is threatened or curtailed by the government, not critics who decline to review your self-funded documentary. That made support of O Cinema a no-brainer even among film professionals who might disagree on the nuances of the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.
Spellman emphasized to me that he has not seen No Other Land but suspects other films could face similar challenges going forward. “It wouldn’t surprise me to see these issues continue to come up here,” he says. “We live in such a polarized, tribal society. Americans just need to be more on guard on a local level.” WIth Paramount still facing Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS, which corporate lawyers called “an affront to the First Amendment” in a recent filing, the challenges are clearly not past us. Will mainstream Hollywood be as willing to step up as O Cinema’s coalition of filmmakers? If we want the First Amendment to apply to AMC and Regal as well as O Cinema, we should probably hope so. Closing CreditsBefore we go, check out a couple of trailers that caught my eye, and some pretty loony news about Looney Tunes. 
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