Hamdan Ballal, one of the four directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was freed on Tuesday after reportedly being attacked and detained in the West Bank the day before.
The news of his attack was originally shared in a post on X yesterday (March 24) from one of his co-directors, Yuval Abraham, who had written that “a group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal.”
“They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding,” Abraham added. “Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.”
Abraham updated his followers on X this morning, writing, “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.”
Abraham has since shared a video featuring a “masked settler,” whom he said was a “part of the lynch mob that attacked Hamdan’s village,” and who “continued to attack American activists, breaking their car with stones.”
Co-directed by Ballal, Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Basel Adra, No Other Land was filmed between 2019 and 2023, and follows Adra, a Palestinian activist, in the midst of “his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation,” per the film’s synopsis.
Meanwhile, Adra “builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist [Abraham] who wants to join his fight.” While the film won Best Documentary Feature Film at this year’s Oscars, the doc does not have a distributor in the U.S.
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.
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) March 24, 2025
According to the Associated Press, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence — an activist group that “brings Jewish activists from around the world to Israel/Palestine to join in Palestinian-led nonviolent civil resistance to occupation, apartheid, and displacement,” per their website — said that “dozens” of Israeli settlers had attacked Susiya, a Palestinian village in the Masafer Yatta region, yesterday.
They also said that while Ballal was in an ambulance being treated, he and another Palestinian man were taken by members of the Israeli military. The Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement to USA Today that they had responded to “mutual rock hurling” between Palestinians and Israelis.
“IDF and Israeli Police forces arrived to disperse the confrontation, at this point, several terrorists began hurling rocks at the security forces,” they stated.
Per USA Today, the IDF said that three Palestinians and one Israeli were detained, including Ballal.
Over an hour after Abraham’s original March 24 post, Adra, another of the film’s co-directors, posted on X, “I’m standing with Karam, Hamdan’s 7 year old son, near the blood of Hamdan’s in his house, after settlers lynched him. Hamdan, co-director of our film No Other Land, is still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and bleeding. This is how they erase Masafer Yatta.”
According to Variety, a Change.org petition to free Ballal was created after he was detained, and has since received 5,190 signatures.
The post Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-Winning ‘No Other Land’ Director, Freed After He Was Attacked And Taken In The West Bank: Report appeared first on Decider.
