Head over to Auditorium Three at the Laemmle Theaters Monica Film Center in downtown Santa Monica one afternoon this week and youll catch a screeningNo Other Land,theOscar-winning documentaryabout the Israeli governments efforts to evictPalestinians from the southern West Bank community ofMasafer Yatta with a decidedly negative view of the Israel Defense Forces.

Stick around after the closing credits for the next showtime, though, and a rather different movie will come up:October 8, the newly released film about the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 and Jewish students bullied on American campuses with a decidedly negative view of the academic left. The screening-room convergence offers a concrete example of what is fast becoming a kind of cinematic ballot box: Two documentaries mainstream Hollywood wouldnt touch, each becoming hits with sharply different views and audiences.

We believe that all kinds of films need to be put out into the marketplace, Laemmle owner and president Greg Laemmle toldThe Hollywood Reporter,explaining the decision to screen both movies. The public can inform themselves about whats out there and hopefully learn more about whats going on in the world by seeing these films.

A low-key battle has been shaping up at movie theaters from indie to chain, coast to coast, this early spring. And while its hardlyFahrenheit 9/11vs.The Passion of the Christ the greatblockbuster-as-ideological-marker from that distant era of 2004 it offers its own spin on the dynamic. Scores of pro-Jewish and pro-Israel filmgoers have been pouring intoOctober 8, while many who align with Palestinians have turned out for the Oscar winner.No Other LandandOctober 8is the film worlds successful attempt, despite Big Hollywoods every effort to stay away, to litigate the defining geopolitical and social issue of our moment.

The popularity of the films which collectively have sold some 250,000 tickets and show little sign of slowing down suggest a hunger for content about the Middle East. But the two films appeal to disparate audiences worryexperts and even one of the movies makers, who say the rivalry offers one more example of a culture gone fractured. To the Team-centric questions of what influencers you follow, what news you watch, what pins you wear and what positions you argue, you can now add a filmic binary: which Middle East documentary youll turn out for and which youd never step foot in.

It would be great if we were getting a lot of crossover, but I dont know that we are,Wendy Sachs, director ofOctober 8,tells THR.The reality is if youre fascinated byNo Other Landyoure probably not fascinated byOctober 8, and vice versa.

Both films are well-told chronicles that could leave viewers rapt and enraged. It just so happens theyll leave different sets of viewers rapt and enraged.

No Other Land directed by a quartet that includes the Palestinian West Bank residentsHamdan Ballal andBasel Adraand the Israeli peace activists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor has been winning awards since its debut at the Berlinale last year for its searing look at residents of a Palestinian community steadily pushed out of their homes by the Israeli government after a long legal battle. Providing emotional ballast is Adra, whose plight puts a human face on an abstract conflict.

But amid the hothouse of Middle Eastern politics, no stateside distributor would buy the movie.So filmmakers have putNo Other Landin American theaters themselves, enlisting the marketing help of the New York-based Cinetic Media and an indie exhibition consultant named Michael Tuckman. After an opening in late January in one New York theater timed to Oscar nominations, the film expanded to 100 screens Oscar weekend and has continued to maintain steam weeks after the ceremony. Last weekend marked its biggest gross since all but the weekend right after the Oscars.

The movie is set to cross $2 million this weekend, or about 170,000 tickets sold rare for any doc in the 2020s, let alone one that featured, per a Cinetic source, not a single ad taken out on its behalf. (The perils of self-releasing.)

A Cinetic spokeswoman said all four of the filmmakers were living or spending a lot of time in the West Bank and were not available to speak to the press (Adra and Abrahams Oscar speeches remain the groups abiding image). The movie is still seeking a television or streaming deal in the United States. Jason Ishikawa, the rep at Cinetics sales arm who is handling sales of the film, did not reply to a request seeking comment.

No Other Land has benefitted from a stream of news events boosting its profile. Miami Beach mayor Steven Meinerattempted unscuccessfullyto evict a theater showingNo Other Landfrom city-owned property last week, generating headlines around the country. And on Tuesday Abrahamsaid thathis co-directorBallal was assaulted by Israeli settlers outside his home and then detained by soldiers when he tried to seek treatment in an ambulance.The IDFsaysPalestinian terrorists initiated the encounter. (For an account of the incident from a peace activist in the region, you can read THRs storyhere.) The very reason that big Hollywood companies have resisted these movies their inability to stay out of the headlines is exactly whats fueling their popularity.

Tuckman says even the team behind the film has been startled by the business its done. This has exceeded everyones wildest expectations, he says.

An equally unlikely path has unfolded beforeOctober 8.The movie uses the October 7 massacre of Israelis as a jumping off point to explore the 18 months of antisemitic and anti-Zionist actions that have followed on college campuses and beyond those standing up to it and those responsible for it. Featuring a host of academics, politicians, student leaders and celebrities (Debra Messing is an executive producer), the film argues that Hamas has been seeding antisemitic efforts in the United States going back more than 30 years.

Made entirely with donations solicited by producer Teddy Schwarzman and Sachs she previously made a movieabout feminist Democratic Congressional candidatesthe doc ran into the same walls as No Other Land. Itcouldnt find a home with any studio or streamer, and was even turned down by every sales agent. In stepped Tom Ortenberg of theatrical distributor Briarcliff Entertainment, who in the past few years has scooped up a host of homeless films such asThe Apprenticeand the Jamal Khashoggi docThe Dissident.

NowOctober 8has become a grassroots sensation in its own right, currently showing on about 100 screens, including outlets of major chains AMC and Regal. On Thursday, its 13th day of release, the film will cross $1 million at the box officea number that, in the post-pandemic era, almost no issue-oriented documentary reaches in any timeframe (except No Other Land).

Buying a ticket to Sachs film has become a form of political expression for the many Jews who feel the inciting atrocities of October 7 have been too easily forgotten and that American culture and media has not done enough to speak out against antisemitism. Members of pro-Jewish and pro-Israel communities in the U.S. have turned out in droves for the movie, with synagogues in New York, Los Angeles and other big cities convening groups for a communal experience.

The Jewish community is to a large degree both plagued by and benefits from the assumption that it is larger than it is,says Dov Lerner, a philosophy professor at Yeshiva University and the rabbi of the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates in Queens, NY, which identifies as a pro-Israel Modern Orthodox congregation. One way to do that is to turn out for events like this and show studios that we are engaged and that we matter, he says, equating film attendance to voting in high numbers to communicate a demographics power to elected officials.

Lerners synagogue is arranging a trip to a local theater to seeOctober 8on Thursday night, he says, and some 40 people have already bought tickets.

The film, he believes, will also meet congregants personal needs. People in our community right now are looking for validation, and explanation, he adds.

LikeNo Other Land,October 8has gained a burst of timeliness from news events, as Columbia University strikes a deal with the Trump administration to more strictly police the kind of antisemitic campus incidents depicted inOctober 8.

And somehowbothmovies have benefited from the blizzard of news around the ICEarrestof Columbia encampments leader Mahmoud Khalil, which to No Other Land devotees represents exactly the kind of injustice Palestinians face in the film, while toOctober 8fans provides an example of precisely the kind of action that authority figures in the U.S need to take more often, though a certain percentage of pro-Israel Americans also disagree with the move.

The idea of nonfiction films so aggressively taking sides marks a departure of sorts. Where many documentary films once investigated all sides of a complex issue the gold standard might be 2006sLake of Fire,Tony Kayes 360-degree view of abortion in Americasome observers have noted that, like many current documentaries, neither No Other Land nor October 8 even has that as its ambition. Both sets of filmmakers come to argue with passion, not explore with detachment.

The funny thing is If you watched both films youd actually get a pretty comprehensive view of the situation, says one veteran studio executive who asked not to be identified because they had not been authorized to speak to the media. But of course how many people are watching both films?

To buy a movie ticket more as salve than educational opportunity is both an understandable and concerning trend to Thom Powers, a prominent documentary programmer at TIFF and DOC NYC.

Every week in this country, no matter your ideology, youre acutely aware more than ever before that 50 percent of people dont agree with you, Powers says. Its isolating. So to sit in a movie theater and get 90 minutes of ideas and people that you agree with makes you feel a little less lonely.

Powers adds, These movies can bring the same comforts that someone whofeels a lack of love might get watching a romantic movie it feeds something thats missing in your life.

In theory, of course, its possible both documentaries get it right; each community has plenty of victims. In practice at least the 2025-era practice of side-choosing and nuance-trashingit doesnt work that way.

Lest you think the battle touched off by the two movies will end soon at the box office, think again. This weekend another Middle East-themed documentary opens. Its called The Encampments and is produced by strident self-proclaimed anti-Zionist Macklemore. AsOctober 8and its stories of pro-Zionist Columbia students who stood up to bullying on campus continues to play in theaters,The Encampments, according to press materials, is a groundbreaking documentary that chronicles the Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Encampment and the international wave of student activism it ignited.

Ryan Gajewski contributed to this report.