Over 500 artists and creatives including Javier Bardem, Penèlope Cruz, Mark Ruffalo, Ava DuVernay, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Olivia Colman and Joaquin Phoenix, have signed an open letter criticising the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their lack of support for Hamdan Ballal, the Oscar-winning co-director of No Other Land.
Part of their letter reads:
“We stand in condemnation of the brutal assault and unlawful detention of Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank.
As artists, we depend on our ability to tell stories without reprisals. Documentary filmmakers often expose themselves to extreme risks to enlighten the world. 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 filmmakers just a few weeks later.
… The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one filmmaker – it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths.”
You can read their letter in full, plus all who signed here.
Hey there bestie – sign up to our FREE Newsletter for more kind, no-gossip celebrity news!
Ballal, a Palestinian filmmaker, won an Oscar earlier this year for his film, No Other Land, along with his fellow Palestinian and Israeli directors Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra and Rachel Szor.
On Monday, Abraham took to platform X writing, “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.”
Activists from the Centre for Jewish Nonviolence told The Guardian, they witnessed and filmed the attack on Ballal and several others.
The International Documentary Association released a statement in the aftermath which said, “We demand Ballal’s immediate release and that his family and community be informed about his condition, location, and the justification for his detention.”
Days later, Abraham took to X once again to share that his friend had been freed after “being handcuffed all night and beaten at a military base.”
Whilst the Academy did release a general statement condemning “harming artists”, many within the industry saw it as a failure to name and defend Ballal. Following the release of the open letter (now signed by over 800 creatives), the Academy released a second statement (per Variety):
“On Wednesday, we sent a letter in response to reports of violence against Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal, co-director of ‘No Other Land’, connected to his artistic expression. We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr. Ballal and the film by name. 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. We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”
Ballal is now home with his family.
(Feature Image Credits: Kathy Hutchins; DFree; Featureflash Photo Agency; Fred Duval/ Shutterstock.com)
#Read #Open #Letter #Academy #Supporting #Hamdan #Ballal
