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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.

“More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023

Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, according to a new report issued today by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.