Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, was lynched by a group of settlers, with IDF soldiers invading the ambulance he contacted to tend to his wounds and was later then taken by the IDF as well, according to a post on X/Twitter by the film’s Israeli co-director, Yuval Abraham.
Abraham added that he was beaten, bleeding, and wounded in his head and stomach. Abraham also added that Ballal had since disappeared and that it’s “unclear whether he is receiving medical treatment or what is happening to him.”
Abraham made the posts on the social media platform in Hebrew and English. He then uploaded a video with a masked settler whom he claims to be one of the individuals who attacked Ballal’s village, adding that “they continued to attack American activists, breaking their car with stones. Hamdan’s location is still unknown.”
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. pic.twitter.com/72pT3UF3kj
— Basel Adra (@basel_adra) March 24, 2025
Abraham then retweeted a post by another co-director of the film, Basel Adra, where he said that he was standing with Ballal’s son, Karam, as they were “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,” referring to the region in the West Bank that is the central setting in the documentary.
Israeli director Yuval Abraham (l) and Palestinian director Basel Adra speak on stage after having received the documentary award for ”No Other Land” during the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival, Feb. 24, 2024 in Berlin. (credit: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES/JTA)
Winning at the Oscars and backlash
No Other Land won Best Documentary at the last Academy Awards earlier this month. On the Oscars stage, Abraham did reference the remaining hostages that are still held in the Gaza Strip.
“We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together, our voices are stronger,” Abraham said about the movie. “We see each other; the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; [and] the Israeli hostages, brutally taken in the crime of October 7, who must be freed. We are intertwined… Together, there is another way.”
Several days after Abraham’s speech at the Oscars, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) issued a statement condemning the documentary for violating the movement’s “anti-normalization guidelines” and argued that the film’s production and participation of Israeli figures in its creation place it in direct conflict with the standards set by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
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The film had also made its Jerusalem debut shortly before it won the Oscar, with a screening at Cinema Spiegel, part of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, following a conversation with Abraham.
Hannah Brown, Noa Feigenbaum, and Hannah Rozenblat contributed to this report.
