Hamdan Ballal, the Oscar-winning filmmaker of No Other Land, has reportedly been arrested by Israeli soldiers after settlers attacked his house.
Ballal’s collaborator Yuval Abraham shared the distressing news on Twitter on Monday: “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.”
Citing five Jewish American activists who witnessed the attack, the Guardian reports that Ballal was surrounded and attacked by about 15 armed settlers in the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta region on Monday. Soldiers eventually intervened and arrested Ballal.
Palestinian-born Ballal co-directed No Other Land as part of a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four activist-filmmakers, including Abraham. The film chronicles the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank over a four-year period between 2019 and 2023, told largely from the perspective of co-director Basel Adra.
Related Video
At this month’s Academy Awards, No Other Land won Best Documentary Feature. While it received limited theatrical screenings in New York and Los Angeles, it has yet to secure a U.S distributor for a wider release.
Content shared from consequence.net.