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The four directors of No Man's Land collecting their Oscars

Update: Backlash to Academy Awards response over No Man’s Land co-director’s ‘lynching’ leads to apology, new statement

Written by Nicol Wistreich on . Posted in News. No Comments on Update: Backlash to Academy Awards response over No Man’s Land co-director’s ‘lynching’ leads to apology, new statement

Over 800 members of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Science signed an open letter against the body’s response to the attack by West Bank settlers on the Hamdan Ballal, co-director of this year’s Best Documentary Oscar winner, No Man’s Land. Ballal reported that the settlers in the West Bank referenced the Oscar during the attack, which his Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham described as a ‘lynching’. The letter, signed by stars including Natasha Lyonne, Olivia Colman, Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed, John Cusack, Joaquin Phoenix, Ava DuVernay, Alfonso Cuarón, Penélope Cruz, Emma Thompson, Tony Kushner and Jonathan Glazer comes after the Academy belatedly condemned the attack in a statement that didn’t mention Ballal by name and referenced the Academy membership’s “many unique viewpoints”. In response to the members’ letter, the Academy’s board has called an extraordinary meeting to discuss a new response. Following the meeting an apology to Ballal was released by AMPAS, condemning “violence of this kind anywhere in the world”, published below.

The letter started by condemning AMPAS’s leadership: “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” and continues “it is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its film-makers just a few weeks later… As artists, we depend on our ability to tell stories without reprisals. Documentary film-makers often expose themselves to extreme risks to enlighten the world” and promises to “continue to watch over this film team. Winning an Oscar has put their lives in increasing danger, and we will not mince words when the safety of fellow artists is at stake.” Abraham pointed out the difference between AMPAS’s response over this to its statement after the Iranian government imprisoned Oscar-winner Jafar Panahi in 2011.

No Man’s Land, currently available to watch free in the UK on Channel Four still does not have a US distributor, something the letter refers to: ”Most films in competition are buoyed by wide distribution and exorbitantly priced campaigns directed at voting members. For No Other Land to win an Oscar without these advantages speaks to how important the film is to the voting membership.”

Updated 29 March 2025:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has apologised:

“We sincerely apologise to Mr Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement and want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world.”

“We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”

Hamdan Ballal in a black suit with his Oscar at 2025's Academy Awards. Some kind of Oscar reception is going on behind him,
Hamdan Ballal with his Oscar
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Nicol Wistreich
Nicol Wistreich
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Photo of a 31 year-old Mark Ruffalo, with moustache, and his name overlayed.

Mark Ruffalo in 2001, for You Can Count on Me

Written by Stephen Applebaum on . Posted in 25.2, Remembering Stephen Applebaum. No Comments on Mark Ruffalo in 2001, for You Can Count on Me

“I had a very difficult time. I actually quit at least 4 or 5 times. I couldn’t get a job. I had done 30 plays in Los Angeles and I couldn’t get a job. I was getting little jobs here and there, but no one was really recognising what I thought I had. I thought, ‘I’ve done all this work, why isn’t it paying off?’ That really starts to hurt your self-image; and I already had a questionable self-image coming into the game. I wasn’t like the best candidate to become an actor. I was really insecure and I didn’t particularly like myself very much.”

What did your mother say to make you not give up? It’s down to her, I believe, that you carried on?
She’d never told me to do anything before and she said, ‘I’ve let you do everything. I’ve tried to let you make all your own choices in your life but goddamit, Mark, I’m not going to let you do it.’ I wanted to go back to Wisconsin and work with my father doing construction painting. She said, ‘Goddamit, I won’t let you do it. If you give up, you’ll never forgive yourself.’ She called my dad and she basically said she’d never talk to him again if he let me come up there. It was a pretty powerful moment for me. I woke up.

Your career really started to take off when you did ‘This is our Youth’, with Kenneth Lonergan, in New York.
Yes. That period of time was like Cinderella. It was very exciting because I had come from Los Angeles theatre, and I went to New York to do a play and nobody knew who the hell I was. After our opening night we’re standing in a restaurant, having a party, and someone comes running in around 12:15, with the New York Times, and yells, ‘It’s a hit! It’s a hit!’ That was a dream!”

Did you talk to John Woo about violence? I have interviewed him a few times and on each occasion he told me how much he hates violence.
I don’t know if anyone knows this about John but his dream is to make a musical. It’s his dream. He just happens to be a fantastic choreographer and really the only way to do it if you’re not doing it with dance is to do it with action. That’s what he does, so beautifully. The way he moves the camera with the actors on Windtalkers, it’s like a huge musical production, very choreographed. He’s the most gentle, soulful, non-violent man I think I’ve ever met, yet he makes these incredibly violent films.”