Not even a year after being attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers, Academy Award-winning No Other Land co-director Hamdan Ballal was once again ambushed at his home — this time, along with his family members.
In a social media statement shared on both the film’s Instagram account and the page of co-helmer Basel Adra yesterday, Ballal said he was assaulted by the same settler who targeted him shortly after his Oscar win in March 2025.
Ballal said four of his family members — two brothers, a nephew and a cousin — are currently arrested and one is in the hospital after being “badly injured.”
“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,” he explained. “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.”
The Palestinian filmmaker and activist said the court victory “was supposed to make things a bit quieter for us. But the opposite has been true. The settlers have ramped up their harassment and the Israeli authorities have done nothing to enforce the decision, and today they joined the settlers in the attack.”
The sentiment echoes Ballal’s words from last year; in an op-ed for the New York Times penned after his initial attack, he highlighted the dissonance between the career triumph and the brutality of the Israeli occupation.
“Three weeks earlier, on the Oscar stage, I had a taste of power and possibility,” Ballal wrote at the time. “But even though our movie received global recognition, I felt I had failed — we had failed — in our attempt to make life better here. To convince the world something needed to change. My life is still at the mercy of the settlers and the occupation. My community is still suffering from unending violence. Our movie won an Oscar, but our lives are no better than before.”
Ballal concluded his new statement by extending an invitation to “all journalists and diplomats” to visit him and his relatives tomorrow to “hear about how the situation has gotten worse in the year since we won the Oscar, as it has across the West Bank.” The post has been shared by fellow industry colleagues like Natasha Lyonne and Sepideh Moafi.
No Other Land, which documents the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by the Israeli Occupation Force, was spearheaded by a Palestinian-Israeli collective exploring the alliance between co-directors Adra, a Palestinian activist, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist. Rachel Szor, an Israeli director, also helmed the project alongside Ballal. Despite garnering critical, audience and awards season acclaim, the group faced an uphill battle toward U.S. distribution, opting to self-release the film after rejecting a deal with platform Mubi, which was heavily censured for being backed by an Israeli defense startup.
Ballal’s 2025 capture and attack was first publicized by Abraham, who later censured the Academy’s response to the attack, as the body refused to unequivocally denounce the violence. Holding an urgent meeting on the ensuing backlash, AMPAS apologized for the vague letter it released about the matter — which did not even mention Ballal by name — after more than 900 leading members of the Academy condemned the tepid move and called for a stronger response. Afterward, the collective drafted a joint letter thanking Academy members for coming to Ballal’s defense.
In the summer of that year, Israeli settlers barred local and international press access to the West Bank villages, where Adra and Abraham had organized a press tour for journalists to witness firsthand the settler violence against and army-led demolitions of the native Bedouin homes. Not even two months later, Palestinian activist and community leader Odeh Hathalin (aka Awdah Hathaleen), who had collaborated with the collective on No Other Land, was fatally shot by an Israeli settler.
