The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has issued an apology for its response to an attack on the Oscar-winning filmmaker Hamdan Ballal following pressure from voting members.
Hundreds of Academy members have criticized the awards body for not acknowledging Ballal by name in its initial statement shared after the Palestinian director said he had been attacked by Israeli settlers and detained by soldiers in the West Bank earlier this week.
The Academy released the statement on March 26, condemning attempts at “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints,” but it did not directly name Ballal — the co-director of “No Other Land,” which took home the best documentary award at this year’s Oscars.
An open letter signed by more than 700 of the organization’s voting members said that the Academy’s statement “fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for.”
“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 letter read in part. It was co-signed by Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem, Olivia Colman, and Joaquin Phoenix, among other leading figures from the film industry.
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After a meeting with the Academy’s board of governors, Academy CEO Bill Kramer and its president, Janet Yang, told members they regretted their failure to acknowledge the Palestinian Oscar winner.
In a fresh statement released on Friday and shared with Business Insider, the Academy said: “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 apologize 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,” it continues. “We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”
Ballal, along with filmmakers Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Basel Adra, received the Oscar for best documentary at the 97th Academy Awards ceremony in early March.
The film, which was made between 2019 and 2023, documents the displacement of Palestinians from their homes in the Masafer Yatta area of the West Bank, focusing on the developing alliance between Adra, a Palestinian activist, and Abraham, an Israeli journalist.
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The documentary struggled to find a distributor in the US, and producers eventually opted to self-distribute the film, which one New York Times critic described as “audacious and devastating.”
Since its theatrical release in January, “No Other Land” has grossed almost $2 million domestically.
The Academy members’ open letter said the film has done particularly well given that it was not “buoyed by wide distribution and exorbitantly priced campaigns” that others enjoyed.
“For ‘No Other Land’ to win an Oscar without these advantages speaks to how important the film is to the voting membership. 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,” the letter read.
Speaking to the Associated Press about the attack, Ballal said that he was detained alongside two other Palestinians after Israeli settlers attacked his village. He told the outlet that he was then blindfolded for more than 20 hours and that he heard those guarding him saying his name and the word “Oscar.”
The Israel Defense Forces has said that an Israeli and three Palestinians were detained on suspicion of hurling rocks, per the AP.
