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Oscar-winning director Hamdan Ballal has been arrested by the Israeli army following an attack on his house in the occupied West Bank on Monday, March 24, 2025. Five Jewish American activists witnessed the attack made by around 15 armed and masked settlers, per The Guardian. The settlers chased Ballal to his house and handed him over to the soldiers.
Hamdan Ballal is a Palestinian director of No Other Land, which won the Best Documentary Feature in this year's Academy Awards. His co-director in the film, Yuval Abraham, also shared how Ballal was reportedly "lynched" by a group of settlers. In his March 24 post on X, Abraham wrote:
"A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co director of our film No Other Land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since."
One of the five witnesses from the attack, Raviv, also told The Guardian that the settlers threw stones at the Palestinian director's car, destroying "all the windows and windshields," and also slashed one of the tires. Besides Hamdan Ballal, another man, who was not identified except by his name Nasser, was also taken to the police station.
Hamdan Ballal recently won the Oscars for No Other Land with three other directors
Hamdan Ballal is a filmmaker, activist, and human rights defender from from Susya, West Bank. Along with three other directors, Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, and Rachel Szor, he directed a documentary called No Other Land. The West Bank-based film shows the destruction and displacement of the Palestinian community in Masfer Yatta.
The documentary, which was shot between 2019 and 2023, first premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024 and won a Berlinale documentary award. However, despite the acclaim, No Other Land had to be self-distributed because it couldn't find a formal distribution in the US.
Abraham spoke to Deadline in February 2025 about the lack of formal distribution of the film and said,
"I believe it's clear that it's for political reasons. I hope that it will change...There are still conversations happening and we are still holding onto this hope that a big distributor will have the minimal amount of courage to take on [the] film."
During the Academy Awards, No Other Land was competing for The Best Documentary Feature trophy against Porcelain War, Black Box Diaries, Sugarcane, and Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. In the end, the Israeli-Palestinian film won the category, and all four directors, including Hamdan Ballal, whom Adra said was having issues with securing a visa, made it into the Academy Awards.
However, with the recent news of the attack and arrest of Hamdan Ballal, fellow director Basel Adra told AP News on March 24 that he thinks the attack may be some form of "revenge" because they made No Other Land. He told the news outlet,
"We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us... This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment."
In February 2025, Basel Adra was also surrounded and attacked by masked Israeli settlers, per The Guardian.
