AMPAS members respond to the lack of support for filmmaker Hamdan Ballal from AMPAS leadership
On 26 March 2025, the leadership of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences emailed its membership a statement with the subject line, “Our Global Film Community.” The statement was ostensibly responding to the detention of Palestinian filmmaker and 2025 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of “No Other Land,” although it failed to mention either Ballal or the film by name, nor did it describe the events it was responding to.
The statement by Bill Kramer and Janet Yang fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for. Therefore we are issuing our own statement, which speaks for the undersigned members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.