Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of “No Other Land,” is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba on Tuesday. (Leo Correa/AP)
Two leaders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologized after hundreds of members condemned their failure to directly acknowledge an attack on Hamdan Ballal — an Oscar-winning Palestinian director who, based on witness accounts and videos, was beaten by Israeli settlers and detained by soldiers.
“On Wednesday, we sent a letter in response to reports of violence against Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal, co-director of ‘No Other Land,’ connected to his artistic expression. We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr. Ballal and the film by name,” read an email sent to Academy members Friday by Academy chief executive Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang. “We sincerely apologize to Mr. Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement and want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world. We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”
Kramer and Yang had outraged many members with Wednesday’s statement, which vaguely condemned “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints” but did not mention Monday’s attack on Ballal in his home village in the West Bank. It added that when responding to major events, the Academy must consider “11,000 global members with many unique viewpoints.”
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Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Joaquin Phoenix were among more than 600 Academy members who subsequently signed a statement lambasting the executives.
“It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later,” read the members’ letter, which was signed by some of Hollywood’s best-known actors and directors, as well as hundreds of documentarians and other filmmakers. “The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one filmmaker — it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths.”
Three weeks before the attack, Ballal stood onstage in Los Angeles with three colleagues to accept the Oscar for best documentary feature for “No Other Land,” which chronicles the struggles of Palestinians in a West Bank community as Israel’s military bulldozed their homes and villages.
Since the documentary premiered last year, it has won awards globally and surpassed $2 million in box office sales, becoming the highest-grossing documentary out of this year’s Oscar nominees despite lacking a U.S. distributor.
The documentary, created by a team of Palestinian and Israeli activists, was filmed in a cluster of rural Palestinian communities known as Masafer Yatta, where Ballal and co-director Basel Adra live.
Ballal was in his home village of Susya on Monday when dozens of masked Israeli settlers descended on the village with batons, knives and a rifle, and started attacking property and residents, activists who report on settler attacks in the area said in a statement. The film co-director, who ushered his wife and son inside their home and stood outside the door to protect them, was beaten by a few of the Israeli settlers, who injured his head and stomach, according to activist reports and witness accounts. He was then arrested by Israeli soldiers and released on Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Forces told a different version of events in a statement posted to X, saying that a “violent clash” broke out between Palestinians and Israelis.
Palestinians in the West Bank have said attacks from radical settlers have become increasingly common in recent months, but Israelis are rarely punished while Palestinians are often arrested by the Israeli army.
Yuval Abraham, an Israeli and Jewish “No Other Land” co-director who led the call for the Academy to respond to Ballal’s attack, shared video of another attack he said occurred in Masafer Yatta on Friday.
A year ago, the Academy found itself in the middle of another internal dispute over events in the Middle East, where the Israel-Gaza war is estimated to have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis since it began with a cross-border assault by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023.
That controversy centered on Jonathan Glazer, the British filmmaker behind the Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” who delivered a passionate speech decrying “dehumanization” while accepting best international feature in March last year. “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing [Israeli] attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?” he said.
More than 1,000 Jewish professionals working in Hollywood signed an open letter denouncing Glazer’s comments, claiming he equated the Nazi regime with “an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination,” Variety reported at the time.
Within a few weeks, nearly 500 Jewish creatives had signed a different letter in support of Glazer’s speech, arguing that the backlash mischaracterized his words. “In his speech, Glazer asked how we can resist the dehumanization that has led to mass atrocities throughout history,” the second letter read. “For such a statement to be taken as an affront only underscores its urgency.”
Glazer was one of the Academy members who signed this week’s letter in support of Ballal, joining prominent signatories including Natasha Lyonne, Ava DuVernay and Tony Kushner.
Claire Parker contributed to this report.