By Orion Blackwood, Open Letter to The New York Times
In early March 2025, filmmakers Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, and Yuval Abraham stood proudly on the Oscars stage, acclaimed internationally for their groundbreaking documentary, No Other Land. This courageous collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian directors exposed the harsh realities of forced displacement in Masafer Yatta by Israeli military actions. Yet, despite global recognition, American viewers searching for this essential narrative found silence: no streaming services, no major theater runs—quietly and without explanation, the film was blocked from distribution in the U.S.
Weeks after their Oscar win, the hidden mechanisms of this covert censorship became shockingly visible. On March 24, Al Jazeera reported that Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal had been violently attacked by Israeli settlers, severely injured, and subsequently arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. His fellow director, Yuval Abraham, urgently shared on social media: “A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal. They beat him severely; he has injuries in his head and stomach and is bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called and took him away. No sign of him since.” This attack starkly illustrates the physical risks filmmakers face when truth threatens powerful interests.
But this is not an isolated incident—it reflects a widespread, systematic pattern of covert censorship in America, stretching back more than a decade.
In 2020, Bryan Fogel’s The Dissident, an unflinching examination of Saudi Arabia’s assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, won critical acclaim at Sundance. Yet, major platforms such as Netflix and Amazon refused to distribute it, privately citing fears of retaliation from the Saudi regime.
Similarly, David Borenstein’s 2025 documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, detailing a Russian teacher’s defiance of state propaganda during the Ukraine invasion, faced similar obstacles. Despite winning Sundance honors, American distributors quietly avoided it, wary of geopolitical backlash.
In 2023, Mstyslav Chernov’s documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, vividly depicting Russian war crimes in Ukraine, encountered significant delays securing U.S. distribution. Distributors hesitated, fearing diplomatic tensions and viewer discomfort with graphic imagery.
Nisha Pahuja’s 2022 documentary To Kill a Tiger, which explores an Indian family’s quest for justice following the brutal assault of their daughter, also faced distribution resistance in America. Major platforms avoided it initially due to its sensitive subject matter, implicitly sidelining crucial conversations around gender violence and human rights.
Another critical example is the 2020 film Do Not Split, documenting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. Major American platforms, anxious about upsetting China, effectively suppressed its distribution, significantly limiting public access and awareness.
Industry insiders, speaking anonymously, admit these examples are merely the tip of the iceberg. “For every public controversy,” explains one distributor, “dozens more films quietly vanish without ever reaching an audience. Invisible censorship is powerful precisely because it’s rarely acknowledged.”
This systematic suppression under the guise of commercial concerns, diplomatic caution, and corporate fear shapes American public discourse profoundly. Films that confront authoritarianism, human rights abuses, or uncomfortable geopolitical truths become silent victims of a commercial landscape increasingly intolerant of risk.
In the so-called “land of the free,” covert censorship thrives beneath corporate discretion and strategic silence, undermining the very ideals of free speech and open inquiry. Audiences lose access to vital truths, while filmmakers who risk everything to expose injustice are abandoned and silenced.
Hamdan Ballal’s brutal arrest and the systematic suppression of documentaries like No Other Land, The Dissident, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and countless others expose a harsh reality: America’s screens are quietly and deliberately controlled. The true cost of this covert censorship is the gradual erosion of democracy itself, where silence—not speech—becomes the loudest and most dangerous voice.
