The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has apologised after criticism for its failure to support the detained Palestinian Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal.
Almost 700 voting members, including multiple A-list actors, signed a letter apologising for not directly acknowledging Ballal and the film by name.
The letter came after Ballal, who directed the documentary No Other Land and won an Academy Award earlier this year, was attacked and beaten by a group of Israeli settlers and at least two soldiers in the West Bank village of Susiya, in the rural Masafer Yatta area of the south Hebron hills.
Bleeding from his head, handcuffed and blindfolded, Ballal, whose documentary chronicles the struggle by Palestinians of the West Bank to stop the army from demolishing their villages, was then moved to a military base and held in custody for one night before being released the following day.
“It was a revenge for our movie,” he said.
On Wednesday, the No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham claimed on X that the Academy, which organises the Oscars, “sadly, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Several US Academy members – especially in the documentary branch – pushed for a statement, but it was ultimately refused. We were told that because other Palestinians were beaten up in the settler attack, it could be considered unrelated to the film, so they felt no need to respond.”
“In other words,” Abraham added, “while Hamdan was clearly targeted for making No Other Land, he was also targeted for being Palestinian – like countless others every day who are disregarded. This, it seems, gave the Academy an excuse to remain silent when a film-maker they honoured, living under Israeli occupation, needed them the most.”
The Academy initially responded to the incident on Wednesday, but it did not refer to Ballal directly. The open letter signed by actors, producers and documentary film-makers criticised the initial statement.
“We sincerely apologise to Mr Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement and want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world,” the fresh statement, released on Friday, read.
“We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances. It is indefensible for an organisation to recognise a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its film-makers just a few weeks later.”
It also condemned the “brutal assault and unlawful detention” of the Oscar winner.
“The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one film-maker – it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths.
“We will continue to watch over this film team. Winning an Oscar has put their lives in increasing danger, and we will not mince words when the safety of fellow artists is at stake.”
High-profile actors who signed the letter included Mark Ruffalo, Olivia Colman, Emma Thompson, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Joaquin Phoenix and Penelope Cruz.
The incident shed light on the escalating violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinians in the West Bank since the onset of the Gaza war on 7 October 2023, amid threats by the far-right government of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to annex occupied Palestinian territory – an objective that could be put in reach by the administration of the US president, Donald Trump.
Israeli settlers and state forces have killed at least 870 Palestinians, including 177 children, in attacks across the West Bank since the start of the latest Gaza war, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.
From 7 October 2023 to 31 December 2024, at least 1,860 incidents of settler violence in the West Bank were recorded – an average of four a day, according to data from the United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.
