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Hamdan Ballal

Palestinian filmmaker, photographer, farmer, and human-rights researcher

Born in
West Bank, Palestine
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Why Hamdan is here

Ballal combines photography, human-rights research, and filmmaking to document Palestinian rural life and the struggle of communities in Masafer Yatta.

Their story

Hamdan Ballal is a Palestinian filmmaker, photographer, farmer, and human-rights researcher from the West Bank. He co-directed and edited No Other Land with Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor after the collective worked together for five years. Their first feature won major festival prizes and the 2025 Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film.

Milestones

The moments that shaped Hamdan’s path.

  1. 2019-2023

    Helped document life and forced displacement in Masafer Yatta as part of a four-person film collective.

  2. 2024

    Made his feature-directing debut with No Other Land.

  3. 2024

    Won the Berlinale Documentary Award and Panorama Audience Award with the film's directing collective.

  4. 2025

    Won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film for No Other Land.

Legacy

What they built, changed and left behind.

  1. Connected documentary filmmaking with years of photography and human-rights research.

  2. Helped preserve a first-person visual record of Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta.

  3. Shared Palestinian authorship of an Academy Award-winning documentary.

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