Head over to Auditorium Three at the Laemmle Theater’s Monica Film Center in downtown Santa Monica one afternoon this week and you’ll catch a screening No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary about the Israeli government’s efforts to evict Palestinians from the southern West Bank community of Masafer 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 wouldn’t touch, each becoming hits with sharply different views and audiences.

“We believe that all kinds of...