‘No Other Land’ Co-Director Hamdan Ballal Freed After Being Attacked, Detained in West Bank

“No Other Land” co-director Hamdan Ballal is now free after being attacked and detained in West Bank, according to his fellow director Yuval Abraham.

“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,” Abraham wrote on X early Tuesday morning.

On Monday, witnesses said on social media that a stone-throwing fight broke out between Israeli settlers and Palestinians after an Israeli shepherd was attacked by Palestinians, Hebrew-language daily newspaper Israel Hayom reported. The Palestinian filmmaker was arrested alongside two other Palestinians in connection to the fight.

“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 Leah Tsemel said after speaking with him just now,” Abraham shared earlier on Tuesday. “He’s still held in the Kiryat Arba police station.”

The latest update comes a day after he first announced Ballal’s detainment. “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.”

Abraham later clarified his initial statement, adding, “Note: 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.”

“No Other Land” from Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Ballal and Abraham won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2025 Oscars. It chronicles the displacement of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta by Israeli military and settlers after a court ruling declared the area a “closed military zone.”

The movie was also recently in the news after a Miami Beach mayor, who is Jewish, tried to get O Cinema screenings of the doc pulled and the theater in question evicted. He has since dropped those plans.

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