Hamdan Ballal

Hamdan Ballal Al-Huraini (Arabic: حمدان بلال الهريني, romanized: Ḥamdān Ballāl al-Huraynī; born 1989) is a Palestinian filmmaker, photographer, agriculturalist, and human rights activist from Susya in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank. He gained international recognition as co-director of the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land (2024), which chronicles Israeli settler violence and displacement campaigns against Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta between 2019 and 2023. Ballal's activism includes documenting occupation-related human rights abuses as a volunteer field researcher for B'Tselem and co-founding the "Humans of Masafer Yatta" storytelling project. In March 2025, he was assaulted by Israeli settlers at his home in Susya and subsequently detained by the Israel Defense Forces, an incident that drew global attention amid escalating tensions following the film's Oscar win.