Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal has now been freed after being detained by Israeli settlers during an attack in the West Bank earlier this week.
According to a tweet by Ballal’s No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham, Ballal was released after being held overnight and assaulted.
“After the assault, Hamdan was handcuffed and blindfolded all night in an army base while two soldiers beat him up on the floor, his lawyer Lea Tsemel said after speaking with him just now,” he wrote in one tweet.
Two hours later, he confirmed that Ballal was “free and about to go home to his family.”
(Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Speaking to The Associated Press, Ballal said he was heavily beaten and forced to sit on the floor under an air conditioner for 20 hours. Although he didn’t speak Hebrew like the guards did, he could hear his name and the word “Oscar” being said as they beat him frequently.
“I realised they were attacking me specifically,” he said from the hospital after his release.
“When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”
Ballal said that when he was first attacked, he thought he was going to die.
“I told myself if they will attack me, if they kill me, I will protect my family,” he said.
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.
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) March 25, 2025
Abraham first reported Ballal’s capture on Tuesday (local time).
“A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film No Other Land,” he wrote on X.
“They beat him and he has injuries on his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.”
Since his initial statement, Abraham issued a correction due to a misunderstanding of the word “lynched”.
“Hamdan was assaulted and beaten up, not murdered. My use of ‘lynched’ was a mistranslation from Hebrew (English isn’t my 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,” the Oscar-winning director clarified.
Ballal and Abraham’s documentary won an Oscar for Best Documentary. It details his village’s struggle against Israel’s occupation.
This attack comes at a time of heightened tensions in the region, after Israel broke the brief ceasefire with a wave of airstrikes just last week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the attack was “only the beginning”.
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