Oscar-winning Palestinian director ‘attacked by Jewish settlers and detained’

From left, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham, winners of the award for best documentary feature film for No Other Land, in the press room at the Oscars in March (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land in the occupied West Bank on Monday, and he was then 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.

They attacked Hamdan Ballal, one of the documentary’s co-directors, leaving his head bleeding, the activists said.

From left, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham, winners of the award for best documentary feature film for No Other Land, at the Oscars in Los Angeles (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

As he was being treated in an ambulance, soldiers detained him and a second Palestinian man, the group said.

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.

Salem Adra, left, brother of Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who won best documentary feature at the Oscars for No Other Land, talks with a local Palestinian shepherd as they stand near an Israeli settlers’ outpost at the West Bank village of Tuwan

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 Basel Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli directors, Yuval 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.