In reaction to the attack on Hamdan Ballal, the film academy apologizes for not recognizing the co-director of “No Other Land.”

More than 600 of the 11,000 members of the academy wrote an open letter on Friday, March 28, 2025, stating that the institution’s statement “fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for.” Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, Riz Ahmed, Emma Thompson, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Jonathan Glazer, the director of The Zone of Interest, were among the signatures.

Kramer and Yang reacted with a new statement following the academy’s board of governors meeting on Friday.

They responded to members, “We want to make it clear that the academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world and sincerely apologize to Mr. Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement.” “Under any circumstances, we detest the suppression of free speech.”

Israeli soldiers freed Ballal after holding him for over twenty hours. Ballal and two other Palestinians have denied accusations that they threw stones at a settler. Following his release, Ballal told The Associated Press that during an attack on his hamlet, a settler kicked his head “like a football.”

“I realized they were attacking me specifically,” Ballal said at a West Bank hospital after his release Tuesday. “When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”

No Other Land, a joint Israeli-Palestinian production, chronicles the situation in Masafer Yatta, which the Israeli military designated as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered the expulsion of the residents, mostly Arab Bedouin. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly come in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards.

After not finding a U.S. distributor despite wide acclaim, No Other Land was self-released in theatres. It still managed to surpass $2 million in North American theatres.