Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the celebrated documentary No Other Land, has published a new essay about being beaten and degraded by Israeli settlers, then blindfolded and detained at an army base, just weeks after winning an Academy Award.
Ballal offered a detailed account of the harrowing experience, which he called “the worst moment of my life,” in a New York Times op-ed. “I could hear my wife and kids screaming and crying, calling for me and telling the men to go away,” he wrote of the attack, adding: “My wife and I both thought I would be killed. We feared what would happen to my family if I died.”
The attack occurred on March 24 in the village of Susiya. Ballal said it was a “typical Ramadan evening” before a neighbor 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. 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.
Ballal said he ”recognized the men,” and when they confronted him outside of his home, they began “beating and cursing me, mocking me as the ‘Oscar-winning filmmaker.” Ballal said 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.”
While the attack was “brutal,” Ballal said, he stressed that it was “not unique in any way.” He noted that, just a few days later, “dozens of settlers, many of them masked,” attacked the nearby village of Jinba, leading to five hospitalizations and 20 arrests. Afterwards, Ballal said, the army “raided the village and ransacked homes, the mosque, and the school.”
The Israeli military has claimed the attack on Susiya was a “violent confrontation [that] broke out, involving mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis at the scene. IDF and Israeli Police forces arrived to disperse the confrontation, at this point, several terrorists began hurling rocks at the security forces.” Multiple witnesses have disputed the claim of any confrontation.
Ballal contrasted the fear and heartbreak he felt on March 24 with the sense of “power and possibility” he’d felt three weeks prior 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.”
Still, Ballal acknowledged that No Other Land’s Oscar victory did bring 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.”
A joint Palestinian-Israeli production, Ballal co-directed No Other Land with Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Shore. The film was made between 2019 and 2023 and documents Israel’s violent treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, with a particular focus on Massager Yatta, where both Adra and Ballal live. Despite struggling to find distribution in the U.S., No Other Land earned wide critical acclaim (and some criticism) ahead of its Best Documentary win at the 2025 Oscars.
Following the attack, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released a lukewarm statement that neither referred to the attack, nor mentioned Ballal or No Other Land by name, but condemned “suppressing artists for their work.” Following widespread criticism, and an open-letter signed by numerous A-list actors — including Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Gore, and Penélope Cruz — the Academy released an equally lukewarm apology, saying, “We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr. Ballal and the film by name.”
From Rolling Stone US
