One of the co-directors behind the Academy Award-winning Best Documentary filmNo Other Landhas been assaulted in his home in Masafer Yatta by Israeli settlers and is currently being detained by the Israeli military for unknown reasons. According toTheAssociated Press, filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was beaten up by Israeli settlers. The report said that a group of 10-20 masked settlers attacked him and other Jewish activists with stones and sticks, smashing their car windows and slashing their tires.
The Academy Award-winning documentarian was left with his head bleeding. While being treated in an ambulance, soldiers detained Ballal and a second Palestinian man. The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident but did not immediately comment toThe Associated Press. The activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence said dozens of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property. Josh Kimelman, a 28-year-old eyewitness at the scene, said:
“We don’t know where Hamdan is because he was taken away in a blindfold.”
‘No Other Land’ Review: 2024’s Best Documentary Shouldn’t Be So Controversial
The incredible documentary just earned an Oscar nomination and may likely win, even though American distributors are afraid of it.
No Other Landis a 2024 documentary film that Hamdan Ballal made alongside Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor in their directorial debut. The film chronicles the struggle by residents of Masafer Yatta, the same area where Ballal was attacked, to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The film is a collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, with Palestinian filmmakers Ballal and Basel Adra living in Masafer Yatta, while Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are of Israeli descent.
The Pushback to ‘No Other Land’
Despite a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and receiving numerous awards, including winning Best Documentary Film at the 97th Academy Awards,No Other Landhas faced a great deal of pushback. The film has still been unable to secure a wide-release distribution deal, even following its awards win. Two weeks afterNo Other Landwon the Oscar, Miami Beach mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution torevoke the lease of a nonprofit art house cinema, O Cinema, from a city-owned property for screening the film. The mayor has since backed off the proposal to evict, but the idea it was introduced in the first place certainly speaks to a troubling matter.
The fact that Hamdan Ballal is being detained without question is sadly very similar to a case happening in the United States right now. On Jul 03, 2025, Columbia University student activist and legal U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil was detained by immigration officers for serving as a spokesperson and negotiator during pro-Palestinian demonstrations who opposed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Following a lack of evidence for the Trump administration’s claims that Khalil was a Hamas sympathizer,they are now shifting their claims that he lied on his Green Card application.
The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil under a rarely used statute in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) written during the McCarthyism sweeping the nation at the time. It allows for removing non-citizens who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” It is a sad time when two separate governments are detaining both Mahmoud Khalil and Hamdan Ballal, for seemingly their only crime is speaking out against innocent lives being killed, which is being twisted into being something more sinister.
