Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, who won an Oscar last month for co-directing the documentary No Other Land, was beaten up by Israeli settlers who set upon his West Bank village of Susya on Monday and is currently being detained along with others by Israeli authorities.

Leah Zemel, an Israeli lawyer representing the detainees, told The New York Times that she has been informed that the individuals are being held in a military center for medical treatment and will be questioned, but authorities did not give a reason for their detention.

Ballal’s Israeli co-director, Yuval Abraham, wrote in a post on X Monday morning, “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.”

Members of the organization Center for Jewish Nonviolence say that Ballal and a second man were detained while being treated for their injuries inside an ambulance, per Associated Press.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

The Center for Jewish Nonviolence shared videos on BlueSky taken by members of the organization and York University doctoral candidate Anna Lippman, which document the attack. One video depicts several individuals being chased by a group of masked settlers back to their car. The driver reverses to escape them after one of the settlers throws a rock which smashes the car’s front window.

Another video shows a masked settler swinging on one of the individuals as a woman shouts, “No! No!” She then asks, “Can we go back to the car? Back to the car, back to the car!” as the settlers advance, throwing rocks and smashing more glass. “Our window was broken,” one man notes, and adds, “That was the military, I think.” The post’s caption reads, “[Ballal] is currently being held by police. The assailants arrived w/ batons, knives, and at least 1 assault rifle; many masked.”

Joseph Kaplan Weinger, a doctoral student at the University of California in Los Angeles, told The New York Times that it was unclear what prompted the attack, but noted that the group of settlers descended on residents as they broke fast for Ramadan, shouting mock blessings for the holy Muslim holiday.

Hamdan’s film, which was co-directed with Abraham, Basel Adra, and Rachel Szor, chronicles Israeli settlers’ relentless series of incursions into a collection of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank called Masafer Yatta, of which Susya is a part. The assemblage of footage shot by the filmmaking collective, together with cellphone video captured by residents of various villages in Masafer Yatta during attacks, establish a years-long history of the very kind of violence visited upon Ballal today. 

Adra, a Palestinian who still lives in Masafer Yatta, stated during his acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature Film at the Oscars, “No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist, as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” Abraham noted, “When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.”

The International Documentary Association condemned the attack on Ballal in a statement, saying, “We demand Ballal’s immediate release and that his family and community be informed about his condition, location, and the justification for his detention.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment.