Paradise Now.

After researching Hany Abu-Assad's Omar (2013), a compelling drama set in the occupied West Bank, I discovered that the director had made a previous film that received two Academy Award nominations but was probably less known in the UK than Omar. This previous movie is Paradise Now released in 2005 but not in the UK until a year later. It's a film whose subject matter would not please everybody, that's for sure; but it's a movie that goes a long way in explaining the motivation behind seemingly ordinary people who are prepared to become suicide bombers because of what they believe in. In this case the attack is to take place against an aggressor that has invaded a country to which they have no legitimate right. 

 

Preparing the explosive device. 

The movie follows two Palestinian childhood friends Said (Kai Nashif) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) who live in Nablus and are recruited by the local resistance group to carry out a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Israel's second most populated city after Jerusalem. There was problem’s making the film on location to which the director is reputed to have commented that if he could go back in time he would not have made the film! This followed a land mine exploding near the set, a missile attack by Israeli gunships on a car again very close to where the filming was taking place, prompting some crewmembers to abandon the project. If that was not bad enough the film’s location manager was kidnapped during the shot, eventually released following intervention from Yasser Arafat’s office. Who said filmmaking was easy?

 

That last video.

In Hany Abu-Assad's Golden Globe acceptance speech he said that he hoped that the award would be "a recognition that the Palestinians deserve their liberty and equality unconditionally" and as I opined in my blog on the recent global warming documentary Greedy Lying Bastards, movies are becoming essential in providing information to make people think and formulate their own views. Let's hope film directors of the calibre of Abu-Assad carry on the good work and are not side tracked by the promise of fame and glory.

More brothers in arms than The Blues Brothers.

Omar.

Premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize, Omar did not get a general release in the UK until a year later in May 2014, but it was well worth waiting for. Directed by Hany Abu-Assad, an Israeli born Palestinian who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1980’s, whose previous movie Paradise Now (2006), a drama about suicide bombers, won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and received an Oscar nomination in the same category. This latest outing is a compelling drama set in the Occupied West Bank. The movie successfully underlines the present unfair situation in the Middle East where the Israelis punish the Palestinians for wanting to live free from military dictatorship in what are rightfully their own lands.

 

The giant separation wall that Omar has to climb....

Set in East Palestine on the front line of a conflict that may never be resolved, it was filmed mainly on location in Nazareth, Nablus and the Far’a Palestinian Refugee Camp which itself is located in the foothills of the Jordan Valley in the Northern West Bank that until 1998 was under the occupation of the Jordanians and the Israelis, then came under the control of the Palestinian National Authority.

 

....so he can visit the love of his life Nadja.

The main protagonist in this tense gripping thriller is Omar (Adam Bakri) a Palestinian baker who we witness regularly climbing over the giant separation wall to visit the love of his life Nadja (Leem Lubany) who he hopes to marry when she leaves school.  But at night he’s a different man ready to risk his life to strike at the invaders.  Along with his two childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani), who is Nadja’s older brother and Amjad (Samer Bishatey), who also has feelings for the attractive young schoolgirl, they hatch a plan to eliminate an Israeli soldier via a high powered rifle. But following his arrest for the killing and consequent torture and beatings Omar is forced into becoming an informant as his only sure way out of prison. But will he inform on his friends and betray his cause, who can he trust when he realises he is not the only informant?  

 

 Omar is not only a lover but also a fighter. 

From whatever way you approach this film it presents you with a moral dilemma but it still a film to appreciate with its strong sense of pace and its fine performances from its Palestinian cast. There is I must say a completely unpredictable ending, well it’s not an American film - so enjoy.