Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning ‘No Other Land’ director, freed from Israeli detainment

One day after Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was attacked later detained by Israeli military, the artist’s No Other Land co-director has revealed a hopeful update on his status roughly three weeks after the pair won Best Documentary Feature at the 97th Academy Awards for their work on the 2024 movie.

“Hamdan Ballal is free and is about to go home to his family,” Yuval Abraham, who worked with Ballal on the documentary feature about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wrote Tuesday morning on X.

Abraham elaborated in a separate message that, “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.”

Ballal and Abraham co-directed No Other Land alongside Basel Adra and Rachel Szor as a chronicle of Israel’s advancement into Palestinian villages in a West Bank area called Masafer Yatta.

Adra also shared a couple of photos of Ballal being treated in a hospital in Hebron on Instagram on Tuesday, writing, “He was beaten by soldiers and settlers all over his body. The soldiers left him blindfolded and handcuffed throughout [the] military base last night.”

On Monday, Abraham, an Israeli journalist and artist, said that “a group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co director of our film no other land” near his West Bank village of Susiya, in Masafer Yatta, adding that “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.”

He later clarified that “Hamdan was assaulted and beaten up, not murdered,” and explained that his “use of ‘lynched’ was a mistranslation from Hebrew” because English isn’t his first language. “He’s injured and being held at a police station in a settlement. They did not let his lawyer speak to him yet so we don’t know more.”

A rep for No Other Land tells Entertainment Weekly that “it’s a great relief that Hamdan has been released.”

EW has also reached out to Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Israel Defense Forces for more information.

On Monday, Leah Zemel, an Israeli lawyer representing those detained, revealed to The New York Times that she was informed that those being held were located in a military center for medical treatment ahead of questioning, and that, to her knowledge, authorities had not given a reason for the detainment.

The Center for Jewish Nonviolence shared videos to the BlueSky social platform, reportedly taken by members of the organization and York University doctoral candidate Anna Lippman. One of the clips shows a group of masked individuals chasing several people toward a vehicle. The driver then reverses the car in an attempt to escape, though one member of the group tosses a rock that smashes the vehicle’s window.

Another depicts a masked person attacking another person, as a woman shouts, “No! No!” She then asks, “Can we go back to the car? Back to the car, back to the car!” as the group advances with further assaults.

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During the group’s acceptance speech at the 2025 Oscars, Abraham noted that “No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist, as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”

“When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal,” he continued. “We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.”