Oscar-winning Palestinian director detained by IDF released after being 'handcuffed all night and beaten' in police station
25 March 2025, 19:57 | Updated: 25 March 2025, 20:01
The Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, who was detained by the Israeli army after being attacked by settlers, has finally been released.
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His fellow co-director Yuval Abraham confirmed his release in a social media post on Tuesday.
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.”
Ballal told AP News he was "blindfolded for 24 hours".
He was pictured leaving the police station where they were being held in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank.
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
The Associated Press reported Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes as he was released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba.
He said he was held at an army base and forced to sleep under a freezing air conditioner.
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Hamdan Ballal and the other directors of No Other Land, which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, appeared on stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month when it won the award for best documentary film.
No Other Land chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.
The joint Israeli-Palestinian 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.
Basel Adra, another of the film's co-directors who is a prominent Palestinian activist in the area, said there has been a massive upswing in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win.
"Nobody can do anything to stop the pogroms, and soldiers are only there to facilitate and help the attacks," he said.
"We're living in dark days here, in Gaza, and all of the West Bank... Nobody's stopping this."
Masked settlers with sticks also attacked Jewish activists in the area on Monday, smashing their car windows and slashing tyres, according to Josh Kimelman, an activist with the Centre for Jewish Nonviolence.
Video provided by the group showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.
Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.
Israel has built more than 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship.
The three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres.
