ISRAELI settlers have beaten and detained one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land in the occupied West Bank.
Hamdan Ballal is understood to have been detained by the Israeli military, activists on the scene have said.
Dozens of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property, said the activist group Centre for Jewish Nonviolence on Monday.
They attacked Ballal near his home and left his head bleeding, the activists said.
As he was being treated in an ambulance, soldiers detained him and a second Palestinian man, the group said.
It said his whereabouts are now unknown.
Yuval Abraham, the Israeli director who won the Oscar alongside Ballal, said: "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."
Fellow Oscar winning director and Palestinian journalist Basel Adra wrote on social media: "I'm standing with Karam, Hamdan's severn-year-old son, near the blood of Hamdan's in his house, after settlers lynched him. Hamdan, co-director of our film No Other Land, is still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and bleeding. This is how they erase Masafer Yatta."
The Israeli military said it was looking into the episode but did not immediately comment.
“We don’t know where Hamdan is because he was taken away in a blindfold,” said 28-year-old Josh Kimelman, who was at the scene.
A group of 10-20 masked settlers attacked him and other Jewish activists with stones and sticks, and smashed their car windows and slashed their tyres.
Video provided by the Centre for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists from the group in a dusty field at night.
The activists rush back to their car.
“Get in, get in,” one shouts, and they duck inside as the thuds of rocks being thrown can be heard.
“Car window was broken,” the driver says as they drive off.
No Other Land, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of Masafer Yatta to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.
It has two Palestinian co-directors, Ballal and Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli directors, Abraham and Rachel Szor.
The joint Palestinian-Israeli production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024.
It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach briefly proposed ending the lease of a cinema that screened the documentary.
