HEBRON, West Bank: An Oscar-winning Palestinian director and two others have been released by Israel, a day after he was badly beaten by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
AP journalists on Tuesday saw Hamdan Ballal and the two other Palestinians leaving the police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba where they were being held.
Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.
Balla’s wife said earlier Tuesday that he was beaten in front of his home by three men in military fatigues while another filmed the attack.
Ballal and the other directors of “No Other Land,” which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, had mounted the stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month when it won the award for best documentary film.
On Tuesday, the three were being held at a police station in the occupied West Bank. Their attorney, Lea Tsemel, said they would soon be released after spending the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack.
She had earlier said they were accused of throwing stones at a young settler, allegations they deny.
Palestinian residents say around two dozen settlers — some masked, some carrying guns and some in military uniforms — attacked the West Bank village of Susiya on Monday evening as residents were breaking their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones, they said.
The Israeli military said Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a what it described as a violent confrontation. On Tuesday, it referred further queries to police, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘I’m dying!’
Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she heard her husband being beaten outside their home as she huddled inside with their three children. She heard him screaming, “I’m dying!” and calling for an ambulance. When she looked out the window, she saw three men in uniform beating Ballal with the butts of their rifles and another person in civilian clothes who appeared to be filming the violence.
“Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more,” Lamia said. “I felt afraid.”
West Bank settlers are often armed and sometimes wear military-style clothing that makes it difficult to distinguish them from soldiers.
On Tuesday, a small bloodstain could be seen outside their home, and the car’s windshield and windows were shattered. Neighbors pointed to a nearby water tank with a hole in the side that they said had been punched by the settlers.
Film looked at Palestinians’ struggle to stay on the land
“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.
The joint Israeli-Palestinian production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened it.
Basel Adra, another of the film’s co-directors who is a prominent Palestinian activist in the area, said there’s been a massive upswing in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win.
“Nobody can do anything to stop the pogroms, and soldiers are only there to facilitate and help the attacks,” he said. “We’re living in dark days here, in Gaza, and all of the West Bank ... Nobody’s stopping this.”
Masked settlers with sticks also attacked Jewish activists in the area on Monday, smashing their car windows and slashing tires, according to Josh Kimelman, an activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. Video provided by the group showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night.
Open-ended military rule
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.
Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.
The Palestinians also face threats from settlers at nearby outposts. Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli forces usually turn a blind eye to settler attacks or intervene on behalf of the settlers.
The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military carrying out widescale military operations that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has been a rise in settler violence as well as Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Oscar-winning Palestinian director released by Israeli forces in the West Bank
https://arab.news/pu4e5
Oscar-winning Palestinian director released by Israeli forces in the West Bank
- AP journalists on Tuesday saw Hamdan Ballal and the two other Palestinians leaving the police station in the West Bank
- Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes
Review: Nicole Kidman’s ‘Holland’ is an underwhelming thriller
LONDON: If you think there’s something unnervingly familiar about “Holland,” then you’re in good company. In this new thriller from Prime Video, directed by Mimi Cave (2022’s excellent “Fresh”), Nicole Kidman plays a permanently frowning wife who just can’t quite shake the feeling that something about her picture-perfect life isn’t quite right – which, when you think about it, could also be the logline for the actor’s turns in “The Stepford Wives,” “Big Little Lies,” “Expats,” “The Perfect Couple” and probably a half dozen others.
This time, Kidman’s Nancy suspects that her optometrist husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) may be having an affair. We don’t really ever find out why she thinks this, beyond the fact that she has ‘a feeling’ and suffers from weird, surreal dreams in which the town they live in — the titular Holland, Michigan — merges with the model village Fred is building in their garage. So, despite having no obvious reason to do so, Nancy and her work colleague-turned-extramarital crush Dave (Gael García Bernal) decide to follow Fred to find out what he’s up to.
The setup for discovering Fred’s secret takes up the majority of the movie. Macfadyen, here simply playing a more homely version of his character in “Succession,” makes for an entertaining enough man of mystery while, for the most part, Kidman and García Bernal are fine as co-workers with an obvious attraction and a shared interest in what Fred is really up to. The main problem with “Holland” is eccentricity for eccentricity’s sake — Cave plays up the town’s Dutch colonial traditions seemingly because they just lend an air of unfamiliarity and weirdness, Nancy’s feelings of dread manifest in those surreal dreams, but none of it has any real-world relevance beyond making for some odd-looking visuals.
The twist, when it inevitably comes, feels disproportionate and overblown given the small-town buildup. Elements, such as Dave’s experience as the only immigrant in town, or Nancy’s issues with their babysitter, are mentioned once and never touched on again. The film suffers from too many vague ideas at the outset, before dumping most of them to make way for the most shocking story arc. Turns out, not only have we seen this film a bunch of times before, we’ve seen it done a lot better too.
Hollywood red carpets play host to Arab designs
DUBAI: Awards ceremonies in Hollywood played host to Arab designs over the weekend with celebrities Sophia Bush, Becky G and Jennie wearing looks from the Middle East.
US actress Bush showed off a scarlet gown by Lebanese designer Jean Pierre Khoury at the at the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards on Thursday, complete with a beaded bodice and separate form-fitting skirt. Bush’s ensemble was put together by Dani Charlton and Emma Rubenstein, the fashion styling duo known as Dani + Emma.
Fast forward to Saturday night and singers Becky G and Jennie Kim, a member of K-Pop group Blackpink, both showed off looks by Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad.
US singer-actress Becky G opted for an all-white dress from Murad’s pre-Fall 2025 collection at the 2025 Billboard Women In Music event, held at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles.
The halter neck column gown boasted silver embellishments on the bodice.
Jennie, who goes by her first name, showed off a look from Murad’s Fall/ Winter 2025 ready-to-wear collection at the same event.
The form-fitting red dress featured a double slit with studs across the slits and sweetheart neckline. The look was completed with a pair of heels by Jordanian Romanian designer Amina Muaddi.
She took to the stage in the outfit to accept the Global Force Award, which is given to "singers, songwriters, instrumentalists and producers making groundbreaking contributions to the music industry" selected by Billboard publication around the world, according to Billboard.
“I’m inspired by all the women in this room — and around the globe who continue to break barriers and make their mark on the world stage,” Jennie said during her acceptance speech. “This award is dedicated to every woman who dares to dream and create and shape the world with her vision.”
This year’s honorees also included Doechii as Woman of the Year; Erykah Badu, who received the Icon Award; Aespa as Group of the Year; and Ángela Aguilar, who won the Breakthrough Award, among others. Presenters included Becky G, Lauren Jauregui, Kali Uchis and Julia Michaels.
Performers included Ángela Aguilar, Aespa, Gracie Abrams, Megan Moroney, Muni Long, Tyla and Erykah Badu.
For her part, US Mexican singer Aguilar dedicated her moment on stage to immigrants. “I want to take this moment to raise my voice for the women whose voices are not always given a stage, for the women who leave behind everything they know crossing borders,” she said.
Amira Al-Zuhair, Gigi Hadid star in accessories campaign
DUBAI: French Saudi model Amira Al-Zuhair starred in a campaign for US fashion label Tory Burch, while US Dutch Palestinian supermodel Gigi Hadid fronted the 2025 leather goods campaign for Italian high-fashion brand Miu Miu, blending fashion and fine art.
For Tory Burch, Al-Zuhair wore a silk set adorned with the brand’s logo, showcasing handbags, perfumes, accessories, shoes and watches from the brand’s latest release.
The Miu Miu campaign, captured by renowned photographer Steven Meisel, features photographs that are digitally hand-painted to achieve a tactile, velvety quality, evoking the essence of classic 20th-century portraiture.
The campaign highlights Miu Miu’s signature matelasse leather, showcased in two bags — the Wander and the Arcadie, available in rich chocolate and mustard hues, as well as vibrant pistachio and fuchsia versions.
On Instagram, Miu Miu shared images from the campaign featuring Hadid with soft, sculpted waves styled to evoke vintage aesthetics. In one of the images, she was dressed in a dark navy jacket layered over a light, checked shirt and a collared blouse. The look was completed with the Wander bag in a mustard hue.
Another photo shows Hadid seated on a vintage green and brown chair, wearing a blue and green gingham dress. She was holding the Arcadie bag in chocolate brown, which also features the matelasse texture.
A third image captured Hadid in a strapless lime green top paired with a soft brown skirt. She carried the brown Arcadie bag as a shoulder accessory.
Hadid has had a long-running relationship with Miu Miu.
Earlier this month, she walked the brand’s runway during Paris Fashion Week wearing a mix of classic tailoring and modern styling with a vintage edge.
She donned a charcoal, double-breasted coat-dress with a structured, oversized silhouette. The look was completed with a 1920s-inspired hat that ties under the chin.
The outfit was further styled with dangling gold earrings, knee-high scrunched socks in a muted olive tone and brown leather loafers.
Last year, Hadid also starred in the brand’s campaign featuring the Wander and Arcadie bags, reflecting a similar 1930s-inspired style. The campaign showcased the handbags in shades of brown, orange, and yellow, with Hadid modeling alongside them.
Also captured by Meisel, the photographs draw inspiration from the innovative style of late British photographer Yevonde Middleton, renowned for employing soft colors and incorporating drapery and foliage in her portraits.
Maja-Ajmia Zellama tackles cultural identity and grief in ‘Têtes Brûlées’
- The Belgian-Tunisian director discusses her Saudi-backed debut feature
RIYADH: Belgian-Tunisian-Danish filmmaker Maja-Ajmia Zellama’s debut feature “Têtes Brûlées” (‘Hotheads’) received two special mentions at last month’s Berlin International Film Festival.
The film, which was backed by Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund, has been praised for its depiction of a universal story through a singular lens. Zellama wrote and directed the movie, which follows the story of Eya (played by Safa Gharbaoui), a 12-year-old girl growing up in a Tunisian-Muslim family in Brussels, whose life revolves around her beloved 25-year-old brother Younès and his friends. Following Younès’ sudden and unexpected death, Zellama takes viewers through the culture, customs, resilience, and solidarity of this tight-knit community through the family’s mourning period.
“I didn’t expect so many compliments about the film from people who are not Muslims or not from immigrant backgrounds,” Zellama told Arab News. “I spoke a lot with a teenager from Germany, and I understood at that moment how grief is so universal. There are other people who say, ‘Oh yes, I’m learning a new thing about a new culture and new religions.’”
Zellama also expressed her appreciation for the Red Sea Fund’s support of a “multicultural” story. “For me, it was a major recognition to have this help and support from a Muslim country. It helped me to make this kind of film, and I’m also very curious about working more with Middle Eastern countries,” she said.
The film tackles aspects of identity, the Arab diaspora, collective grieving, religion, cultural customs, and commentary on street crimes. Largely set in the family house, constantly filled with people after Younès’ tragic death, one of the director’s goals was to show the contrasting comfort and simplicity of immigrants’ family lives compared to their lives outside of their homes.
“For me, the most complicated part of identity and immigration is systemic racism,” Zellama said. “It’s oppression in the society. But in the home, it’s not always so complicated. There are nuances; it’s complex, but in a positive way.”
Zellama’s own life was a major inspiration for the film. Her father is Tunisian and her mother Danish. She was born and raised in Belgium around a large Tunisian community. Her household was home to two religions and three languages. “The question of identity has been present all my life, of course, as a mixed kid, but also as a person of the diaspora,” she explained.
And Zellama’s experience of losing a much-loved family member was central to the narrative. “When I was grieving with my family, it was the most difficult time in my life. But it was also one of the moments in my life when I felt the most love and solidarity, because we were surrounded by so many people who were (making us) dinner, going to the grocery, giving money,” she said. “So, for me, yes, there is the grief that we had in our family, but also — and most of all — the love.”
The film explores spirituality in a nuanced and open way, particularly in its funeral and burial scenes, inspired by Zellama’s own journey with faith. She was keen to have Eya find a kind of forbearance through religion while also providing representation and an alternate, more complex, portrayal of Islam in countries outside the Middle East.
“Muslims are very different, and each person practices religion in a different way,” Zellama said. “She finds this way, and she’s good with it.”
And the film has proven to cross cultural and religious boundaries, with viewers from other faiths and backgrounds connecting to its central themes.
“Just to hear the Qur’an, (even if) you don’t understand it, you can feel something,” she said. “You don’t know what it is, but you can feel something. When you see her praying, you can imagine. And, for me, that’s enough.”
The character of Eya is key to the film’s success: she’s mature, but also playful; she’s creative, clever, defiant, and works to break stereotypes throughout the film. One of the most affecting, and effective, scenes is when she breaks away from the group of mourning women to help bury her brother alongside the men.
“I wanted to have a character who grows up in a lovely family who give space for this young girl to be what she wants,” Zellama said. “She doesn’t (think to) herself, ‘Oh, this is a boy thing or a girl thing.’ No, she’s doing what she wants to do at this moment.
“She’s very impulsive, and the impulsivity was also an important thing in the character of Eya,” she continued. “She looks like so many Muslim women and children I see around me. So, this was not me making a ‘statement.’ It was more me thinking that there are so many strong little girls around me, and I wanted to have a character like that.”
Meshal Al-Jaser talks AlUla, tasheer, and ‘Gunpowder’
- The Saudi filmmaker’s viral music video explores otherworldly landscapes and traditional dance
ALULA: For the video of the latest track from his electronic music project Arabian Alien, Saudi filmmaker Meshal Al-Jaser headed to the heart of AlUla’s dramatic desert landscape. “Gunpowder” blends striking visuals with Al-Jaser’s signature surrealist touch.
The track, created with his bandmate Mohammed Alhamdan, explores themes of heartbreak and disillusion, using the raw beauty of AlUla to amplify its message.
“It’s about tragedy,” Al-Jaser tells Arab News. “It’s about someone who’s trying to cope with getting his heart broken.”
The video has racked up more than 1.7 million YouTube views in the first month of its release, thanks to its arresting visuals, especially of the Hejazi war dance, tasheer, which involves firing rifles into the ground as the wielder jumps into the air, sending a dramatic display of fire and gunpowder under their feet.
“I was always fascinated by tasheer, in terms of visuals,” says Al-Jaser. “A lot of the tribes in Hejaz practice it. And, like many other Saudi dances, it really originates from trying to intimidate the enemy. With time, it became more of a celebratory dance that they do at weddings and such.
“For years, I really wanted to capture it the right way, because it requires a lot of elements to come together,” he continues. “What’s specifically fascinating about it for me is really the precision and the skills of the people that do it. You have to jump at the right time, point in the right direction, shoot at the right time and land at the right time. It’s not a simple dance. It requires a lot of skill.”
“Gunpowder,” is an extension of Al-Jaser’s mission to capture the true essence of Saudi culture. “I don’t want to change anything in it or bend it around, as much as I just want to capture it in the way I view it,” he says.
Shooting against the towering sandstone cliffs and vast desert landscape of AlUla was also a treat. “I was really mindblown. It’s one of the most unique locations in the world. It’s very diverse. Every piece of it feels like a whole different world. So, when (Film AlUla) approached me (to shoot a video there), I already knew it was going to look good because of the environment,” Al-Jaser says. “One of the biggest challenges was that we only had two days to shoot it. We were just running around to really try to capture all the essence of the place, because it’s so different.”
From viral YouTube sketches to acclaimed short films, Al-Jaser’s work has challenged cultural taboos and reimagined Saudi identity through a satirical lens. His storytelling often explores the tension between tradition and modernity, mixing absurdity with sharp cultural commentary.
In 2023, Al-Jaser released his debut feature film, “Naga,” which boldly set out his signature style — provocative, surreal and unafraid to push cultural boundaries. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a thriller-horror hybrid set in a dystopian desert landscape. It follows a rebellious young woman named Sarah, who sneaks out to attend a secret party in defiance of her conservative father’s rules. But when she misses her curfew and tries to return home, her night takes a bizarre and terrifying turn.
“My ultimate dream was always to become a filmmaker and make feature films. So this was just a small step towards that,” Al-Jaser says. “It was very interesting. Anyone you know who has shot a feature film would tell you that it’s the hardest thing they’ve done, because, especially with the first film, you kind of want to do so much with so little, and it’s a whole different experience.
“I know it’s all directing and storytelling, but, really, the amount of effort it takes to make a feature film as opposed to a short film makes it feel like a whole different medium. So, my experience was very challenging, but at the same time, I also feel really privileged to have done my first feature with Netflix. It was nice for them to really believe in me. And for it to go to Toronto… I’m so thankful for that.”
Al-Jaser hopes to make his big-screen start as a filmmaker soon. “Hopefully I will make my cinematic debut, because ‘Naga’ was a streaming film,” he says. “I’ve never experienced my film in a cinema and that’s something I’m really looking forward to.
“I really am attempting to do the best I can. Of course, I feel the weight and the responsibility, since I’m one of the first generation of Saudi filmmakers, but I also feel the privilege of that,” he continues. “If I can stay focused — which is easier said than done — then hopefully everything will fall in the right place.”
