Backlash to Academy Awards response over No Man’s Land co-director’s ‘lynching’ grows; board meets.
Over 600 members of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Science have condemned 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.
