Oscar-Winning Palestinian Director Was Beaten by Mob of Masked Israelis Armed with Stones and Held Captive Overnight

• Hamdan Ballal accepted an Oscar on March 2 for co-directing No Other Land, a documentary that showed Israel's destruction of a Palestinian community in West Bank.
• Three weeks later, the Palestinian director was reportedly attacked by an Israeli mob in his West Bank village, abducted by Israeli forces and detained overnight.
• Ballal's co-director Basel Adra, who witnessed the attack, told the AP that he and others behind No Other Land have faced daily attacks since the Oscars, suggesting, “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie.”

Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian director whose Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land, tells the story of violence and human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, was beaten by Israeli settlers on Monday, March 24, before being detained by military forces.

One of Ballal’s co-directors, Basel Adra, told The Associated Press that the settlers entered and began attacking the West Bank village of Susiya just after sundown on Monday — when Muslim occupants were breaking their Ramadan fast.

Some were masked, Adra said, while some were in Israeli military uniforms. Some had guns, while others were armed with stones and sticks, according to people who spoke with the AP.

They approached Ballal’s house, Adra recounted, and began beating him while some of the soldiers shot into the air. Ballal’s wife could hear the attack from inside her house and reportedly heard him yell, “I’m dying!”

He was then taken away, handcuffed and blindfolded, and put into a military vehicle.

The military confirmed to the AP that they detained three Palestinian citizens, saying they were suspected of throwing rocks at Israeli forces. While that source said the Palestinians were transferred to Israeli police for “questioning,” Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said police later told her that Ballal and two others were being held at a military base for medical treatment.

On Tuesday morning, another of Ballal’s No Other Land co-directors, Yuval Abraham, posted on X that he had been released.

“After being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base, Hamdan Ballal is now free and is about to go home to his family,“ he wrote.

No Other Land details Adra’s upbringing in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank. After the area is declared a Israeli military firing zone, Palestinian residents are targeted by Israelis, who attempt to forcefully remove them and seizing and destroying their homes.

The film premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, where Abraham told Variety that the Israeli military entered Adra’s home twice during the making of the documentary and confiscated cameras and computers.

"We were always very, very stressed,” he noted. “It was complicated logistically and quite stressful, but in the end we managed.”

The documentary went on to be selected at many more film festivals before winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in March 2025. Despite its awards and international acclaim, however, the documentary has yet to find a major U.S. distributor. 

The film's publicity put an indelible target on the filmmakers’ backs.

"We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us,” Adra told the AP. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”