The ‘no other land’ director thanks the members of the Academy for the letter supporting Hamdan Ballal

Basel Edra, left, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballel, and Yuval Abraham Los Angeles’s Dolby Theater on Sunday, March 2, 2025 during the Oscar accepts the award for the Best Documentary Feature Film for “No Other Land” during the Oscar. , Photo Credit: AP

Oscar winning filmmaker No other landHamdan Ballal, Basel Edra, Rachel Szor, and Yuval Abraham thanked the members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for signing a letter, in which the academy was naked to condemn the attack on Balla by Israel. He wrote a note that was distributed to all the signators of the letter.

The note reads, “Dear friend, we wanted to briefly share with you that the physical condition of Hamdan has improved in the last few days and he is at home with his children. The letter written by you in you is moving deeply ahead of us personally, and is also a significant politically, especially every day.

On March 25, 2025, Ballal said The Associated Press How he was beaten up by an Israeli citizens and soldiers before night. A citizen, he said, “Like a football”, during a settling attack on his village, kicked his head.

The soldiers then detained him and two other Palestinians. Balal said that he was blindfolded for more than 20 hours, sitting on the floor under a blasting air conditioner.

On Friday (March 28, 2025), more than 600 out of 11,000 members of the academy issued an open letter, stating that the Academy’s statement “was much less than the feelings of this moment for this moment.” The signators were Jokin Phoenix, Olivia Coleman, Riz Ahmed, Emma Thompson, Xavier Bardem, Penelope Cruise and Jonathan Glazer.

Following a meeting by the Academy’s Board of Governors, the Academy CEO Bill Kreer and President Janet Yang responded with a new statement.

He said, “We honestly apologize to Mr. Ballal and all the artists who felt inability to our previous statement and want to clarify that the academy condemns such violence anywhere in the world,” he wrote to the members. “We hate the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”