New York – After the criticisms after their initial response to The violent attack In the “No other Land” encoder, Oscar winner, Hamdan Ballal, the Motion Pictures Arts and Science Academy apologized on Friday for not recognizing Ballal by name.
In a letter to the members of the Academy, the CEO of the Academy, Bill Kramer, and its president, Janet Yang, said they regretted not issuing a direct statement about Ballal. The director, the witnesses, the director said, was defeated by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank and then arrested by the Israeli army.
The attack, only weeks after Ballal and his fellow directors won the best documentary in the Academy awards, It was widely condemned by numerous cinematographic organizations, among others. The Academy issued a statement by “harming or suppressing artists for their work or views.”
Yuval Abraham, a journalist and co -director of “No other land”, was very critical of that response, comparing it with “silence about Hamdan’s assault.”
On Friday, more than 600 of the 11,000 members of the Academy issued an open letter that said that the academy’s statement “was far from the feelings that this moment requires.” Among the signatories were Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, Riz Ahmed, Emma Thompson, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and the “The Zone of Interest” Jonathan Glazer.
After a meeting on Friday by the Board of Governors of the Academy, Kramer and Yang responded with a new statement.
“We sincerely apologize to Mr. Ballal and all the artists who felt without support for our previous statement and we want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this type anywhere in the world,” they wrote to the members. “We hate the suppression of freedom of expression under any circumstance.”
After being arrested for more than 20 hours, Ballal was released by Israeli soldiers. Ballal and two other Palestinians were accused of throwing stones at a settler, accusations that deny. After being released, Ballal told The Associated Press that a settler kicked his head “like a football” during an attack on his people.
“I realized that they were specifically attacking me,” Ballal said in a West Bank hospital after his release on Tuesday. “When they say ‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”
“There is no other land”, a Joint Israeli-Palestine productionIt narrates the situation in Masafer Yatta, which the Israeli army designated as a living fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered the expulsion of residents, mostly Arab Bedouins. Around 1,000 residents have remained in place, but the soldiers regularly come to demolish houses, tents, water tanks and olive orchards.
After not finding an American distributor despite the great acclamation, “no other land” was repaired in theaters. He still managed to exceed $ 2 million in American theaters.
