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‘No Other Land’ Directors Thank Academy Members For Coming To Defense Of Hamdan Ballal After Attack
The 'No Other Land' filmmakers are thanking top members of the Academy for coming to the defense of director Hamdan Ballal after his attack and arrest.
Nearly 900 Academy members have signed the message sent Friday to Academy President Janet Yang and CEO Bill Kramer, which criticized the pair’s initial response to an incident in which Israeli settlers allegedly beat Ballal outside his home in the rural Masafer Yatta area in the occupied West Bank, and then Israeli authorities detained the filmmaker and allegedly beat him while he was in custody and mocked him for winning an Oscar. Yang and Kramer’s initial statement on the attack, circulated privately to Academy members, condemned “harming or suppressing artists for their work or their viewpoints” but didn’t mention Ballal by name, nor No Other Land, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature on March 2. The message of thanks from the four directors of No Other Land commends signatories – a list that now includes Ben Affleck, J.J. Abrams, Ava DuVernay, Denis Villeneuve, Edward Norton, Riz Ahmed, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Joaquin Phoenix, Sarah Polley, the three governors from the documentary branch – Simon Kilmurry, Jean Tsien, and Chris Hegedus – and hundreds more, representing every voting branch of the Academy.
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