Oscar-Winning ‘No Other Land’ Director Hamdan Ballal Denounces Attack

Hamdan Ballal, co-director of Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” has sounded an alarm saying his family has been attacked again by the same Israeli settlers who targeted him shortly after his Oscar win in March 2025.

The new attack has caused one of his brothers to be hospitalised, while four members of his family have been arrested, according to a statement posted by Balal on social media.

“Two weeks ago we managed to get a decision from the Israeli court that the area around my home is closed to non-residents, but the settlers break that order and still come with their flocks almost every day,” Balal said in a post on X.

“We call the police, they do nothing. The army comes, they do nothing. Today, Shem Tov Lusky—the settler who attacked me in my home shortly after I won the Oscar last year—came with his flock to my home. My brother called the police to report the incursion. The army came first and immediately raided our house, attacking everyone inside.”

A few weeks after “No Other Land” won the best documentary Oscar on March 2, 2025, Ballal suffered a violent attack by Israeli settlers near his home in the West Bank village of Susiya. He was reportedly assaulted and then taken from an ambulance by Israeli soldiers. Ballal said he was zip-tied and blindfolded and held for 24 hours at an Israeli army base before being released.

At the time the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences came under fire for initially failing to publicly support Ballal, though they subsequently issued a follow-up letter explicitly naming Ballal and apologizing for omitting both him and the film from an earlier statement.

The Oscar-winning “No Other Land” was made by an Israeli-Palestinian team including Abraham, Ballal, Basel Adra and Rachel Szor and chronicles the fight of a Palestinian community in the West Bank facing displacement by Israeli forces. The film premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival, winning both the documentary jury prize and the audience award. Despite widespread acclaim on the festival circuit, it was self-released in the U.S. after distributors declined to pick it up.