Odeh Hadalin, a Palestinian activist who contributed to the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has reportedly been shot and killed by an Israeli settler.
Hadalin, also known as Awdah Hathaleen, was a consultant on the film, which was recorded between 2019 and 2023 and shows the destruction of a Palestinian community, Masafer Yatta, in the West Bank.
Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, one of the directors of the film, was the first to report the news. Yesterday (July 28), he posted on X (Twitter) that Hadalin had been shot in the lungs, and two hours later he quoted his original post, adding, “Odeh just died. Murdered.”
He claimed that local residents identified Yinon Levi, a settler who has previously been placed under European Union and United States sanctions, as the shooter, and the Times of Israel reported today that Levi has been ordered to remain under house arrest by the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court under supervision of his wife and sister-in-law until Friday (August 1).
Odeh just died. Murdered. https://t.co/rRWqSa48iN
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) July 28, 2025
Per reports from Israeli news outlets, the shooting occurred when residents tried to stop settlers from entering land near the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair.
Back in March, weeks after No Other Land’s Oscar win, another of the film’s co-directors, Hamdan Ballal, was attacked by Israeli settlers and detained by the Israeli military. He was released a day later and reflected on the experience the following month in a New York Times op-ed, describing it as the “worst moment” of his life.
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“I could hear my wife and kids screaming and crying, calling for me and telling the men to go away,” he said. “My wife and I both thought I would be killed. We feared what would happen to my family if I died.”
The Academy issued an apology for not supporting Ballal, with Abraham writing on X: “Sadly, the U.S. 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.”
Not long afterwards, The Academy released a statement condemning “harming artists”, but didn’t name any specific person.
Over 800 Academy members signed a letter criticising its failure to defend Ballal publicly, including actors Mark Ruffalo, Olivia Colman, Joaquin Phoenix, Riz Ahmed, Penélope Cruz, Emma Thompson, Natasha Lyonne, Javier Bardem, Sandra Hüller, Richard Gere, Andrea Riseborough and Susan Sarandon.
The film premiered worldwide as part of the Panorama section at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024, and it won both the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film and the Berlinale Documentary Film Award. At the Oscars in March this year, it won Best Documentary Feature Film, and Abraham, Ballal and their fellow directors, Basel Adra and Rachel Szor, were praised for their speech.
Adra said, upon accepting the award: “About two months ago I became a father and my hope to my daughter [is] that she will not have to live the same life I’m living now, always fearing surveillance, home demolitions and forced displacements that my community is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.
“No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we’ve been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”
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