The Hollywood Film Academy is worried and on the verge of an internal crisis. Los Angeles’s maximum cinematographic organ (and, probably, one of the most influential and media of global cinema) has seen with a co -director of the documentary concern No Other Landthat on March 2. After the complaint of the feature film co -director for the lack of support from Hollywood, the president of the Academy, Janet Yang, sent a letter, sentenced to what happened, but many of its members seemed late, warm and little specific. Hence, the Board of Governors of the Academy, its highest management body, has decided to gather urgently and in an extraordinary way to decide how to face that attack and express its support to the documentary team.
The meeting took place at eleven o’clock in the morning, Pacific time (seven in the afternoon, Spanish peninsular time), as the specialized publication in cinema has announced exclusively . Around 600 members of all the branches of the Academy have signed two writings. One, for which they demand a more forceful response to the treatment that Ballal received from the Israeli authorities. Another, the alternative they would send in response to the attack, much harder than that of the presidency. Among the signatories are the Spanish actors Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, the British Olivia Colman and Emma Thompson and the American interpreters Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffal Errol Morris, Jim Jarmusch, Adam McKay and Jonathan Glazer, as well as screenwriters, musicians, makeup, costumes, sound, animation or special effects, and of course dozens of documentaries.
These letters are clear criticism of the president of the Academy, Janet Yang, and its executive director, Bill Kramer, by Wednesday’s statement, which qualify as late and with little force. In fact, in the statement that Yang and Kramer sent internally and also to the Associated Press agency (he did not reach journalists who are subscribed to their news, as usual), they did not even mention the name of the documentary or ballal. It read that “the academy condemns to be harmed or represses artists for their work or views.” “We live in a time of deep changes, marked by conflict and uncertainty, throughout the world, in the United States and within our own industry. It is understandable that we are often asked to talk in the name of the Academy to respond to social, political and economic events. In these cases, it is important to note that the academy represents about 11,000 members around the world with many unique points of view Equidistance that many have not liked.
The Academy letter came several days after the attack on Ballal, and also after complaints by the documentary management team ,. One of those directors is the Israeli Yuval Abraham, who precisely denounced the disappearance of his Palestinian colleague on social networks, as well as the subsequent beating he suffered, telling how “he had wounds in the head and stomach, bleeding” and that “the soldiers invaded the ambulance he called and took him.”
On Wednesday, Yuval Abraham himself returned to write in X, this time to criticize the inaction of the Almighty Academy, which these weeks is also current. “Unfortunately, the United States Academy, which awarded us an Oscar three weeks ago, refused to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers,” said the “the European Academy expressed her support, as well as other innumerable groups of awards and festivals. Several members of the United States Academy – especially in the Branch of Documentaries – They pressed to make a statement, but was finally rejected.
Sadly, the US Academy, which awarded us an Oscar three weeks ago, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
The European Academy voiced support, as did countless other award groups and festivals. Several US…
– Yuval Abraham Yuval Abraham (@yuval_abraham)
When on Wednesday night, it was clearly insufficient. In fact, some academics from said documentary branch have expressed, anonymously, that the answer was “embarrassing and shameful.” “We found her at all horrible,” said a member in the American press. All this has caused the academy to have gathered urgently and that the most angry members have sent a letter, which also collects Deadline exclusively. “On March 26, 2025, the Directorate of the Academy of Arts and Film Sciences sent by email a statement with the matter ‘Our world cinematographic community’. The statement apparently responded to the arrest of the Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, winner of the 2025 Academy Award for the best documentary feature film and one of the directors of No Other Landalthough he did not mention Ballal or the film by his name, nor described the events he responded to, ”regrets those 600 members in the statement.“ The statement of Bill Kramer and Janet Yang fell very short in terms of the feelings that this moment demands. Therefore, we issue our own statement, which speaks on behalf of the members of the Academy of Arts and Film Sciences below signatory. ”
In addition, these 600 signatories have also written their own statement, who believe that it must be sent in response to the very hard aggression suffered by Ballal, and in which it reads, with much more hardness than in Yang’s and Kramer’s: “We condemn the brutal aggression and illegal arrest of the Oscarized Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal by settlers and Israeli forces in the West. And it continues: “As artists, we depend on our ability to tell stories without reprisals. Documentariators are often exposed to extreme risks to illuminate the world. It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with a prize in the first week of March and that then does not defend their filmmakers just a few weeks later.”
No Other Landthat in the United States did not achieve a distributor and therefore could not be seen in Salas, it is a documentary feature film where the occupation in the West Bank is portrayed. It has been carried out over five years and until October 2023, and in it the stark violence of the occupation is seen. After winning the best documentary award at the Berlin Festival of 2024, on March 2 he won the Oscar. In his speech to collect the award, Basel Adra, one of his directors, affirmed: “I hope that my daughter does not have to live the same life that I am living, always under surveillance, with invasions, displacements and an occupation. This film reflects the reality so raw in which we have been living decades. We ask for actions to end this injustice and the ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people.”
For his part, Abraham also proclaimed on the stage of the Dolby Theater in Hollywood: “Palestinians and Israeli we managed to make our voices stronger and its people have to end, Israeli hostages in Gaza have to be released. When I see Basel, I see my brother, but we are not the same. We live in a regime where I am free under civil law, while I destroy your life. ” And he concluded in his speech: “We need a political solution without ethnic supremacy. The foreign policy of this country helps to block this path, do you not see that we are intertwined? My people can only be sure if the Palestinians are really free. There is no other way to do it, there is no other way of living.”
