Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has opened up about the attack he faced from Israeli settlers earlier this year.
Ballal was released by Israeli authorities on March 25 after his co-director Yuval Abraham wrote on X/Twitter the day before that he had gone missing after being attacked by Israeli settlers, and then arrested.
Now, Ballal has reflected on the experience in a New York Times op-ed. The director referred to it as “the worst moment of my life”, adding: “I could hear my wife and kids screaming and crying, calling for me and telling the men to go away. My wife and I both thought I would be killed. We feared what would happen to my family if I died.”
The attack occurred in the village of Susiya on what Ballal describes as a “typical Ramadan evening”, disrupted when a neighbour raised the alarm about a settler attack. Ballal said he first tried to “document the moment”, but when he saw the crowd growing in size, he returned home.
Then, when seeing a settler and “two soldiers” coming towards him, he told his wife and children to go inside their home and not open the door, adding that he recognised the men.
Ballal went on to say that they confronted him outside of his home, “beating and cursing me, mocking me as the ‘Oscar-winning filmmaker.” He then said that a gun was stuck into his ribs and someone “punched me in the head from behind.” On the ground, he continued, “I was kicked and spat on.”
After he was beaten, Ballal said, he was “handcuffed, blindfolded, and thrown into an army jeep. For hours, I lay blindfolded on the ground on what I later learned was an army base, fearing that I would be held for a long time and beaten again and again. I was released a day later.”
He then noted that, though “brutal”, the attack was “not unique in any way”, referencing an attack that he says occurred two days earlier where “dozens of settlers, many of them masked,” attacked the nearby village of Jinba, leading to five hospitalisations and 20 arrests. Afterwards, he says, the army “raided the village and ransacked homes, the mosque, and the school.”
In a statement to Sky News, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that on the evening of March 24, “several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles near Susiya”, and a violent confrontation broke out which involved “mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis at the scene”.
They continued: “IDF and Israeli Police forces arrived to disperse the confrontation, at this point, several terrorists began hurling rocks at the security forces.”
“In response, the forces apprehended three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation. The detainees were taken for further questioning by the Israel police. An Israeli citizen was injured in the incident and was evacuated to receive medical treatment.
“Contrary to claims, no Palestinian was apprehended from inside an ambulance.”
Ballal went on to say that the fear he felt during the attack was a stark difference to the sense of “power and possibility” he’d felt three weeks earlier while accepting his award on the Oscars stage. “My heart was broken from the disappointment. From the sense of failure,” he said, adding: “[E]ven though our movie received global recognition, I felt I had failed — we had failed — in our attempt to make life better here. To convince the world something needed to change. My life is still at the mercy of the settlers and the occupation. My community is still suffering from unending violence. Our movie won an Oscar, but our lives are no better than before.”
He did acknowledge that No Other Land’s Oscar victory brought significant press attention to the attack. “The messages and voices of support around the world have been overwhelming,” he said. “I know that there are thousands and thousands of people who now know my name and my story, who know my community’s name and our story and who stand with us and support us. Don’t turn away now.”
Ballal directed No Other Land alongside Abraham, Basel Adra and Rachel Szor. The film chronicles the demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank between 2019 and 2023, and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 ceremony earlier this year.
On March 26, two days after Ballal’s release, his co-director Abraham criticised the Academy in a post on X for not issuing their own statement of support for Ballal, writing: “Sadly, the U.S. Academy, which awarded us an Oscar three weeks ago, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers.”
Shortly afterwards, The Academy released a statement condemning “harming artists”, but did not name any specific person.
In response, on March 27, a letter began circulating among Academy members, criticising their failure to defend Ballal publicly. It was signed by over 800 members, including actors Mark Ruffalo, Olivia Colman, Joaquin Phoenix, Riz Ahmed, Penélope Cruz, Emma Thompson, Natasha Lyonne, Javier Bardem, Sandra Hüller, Richard Gere, Andrea Riseborough and Susan Sarandon.
The next day, the Academy then issued a follow-up letter to its 11,000 members, explicitly naming Ballal and apologising for omitting both him and the film from the earlier statement. It reportedly followed an emergency meeting on Friday morning with The Academy Board of Governors and top-ranking leadership officials to discuss their response to mounting backlash.