After the hugely successful Paradise Now, Omar is Hany Abu-Assad’s another poignant story about the Israeli-Palestinian issue that earned the Palestinian director his second Academy Award nomination.
Omar is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. On the other side of the wall, the sensitive young baker Omar becomes a freedom fighter who must face painful choices about life and manhood. When Omar is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls into a cat-and-mouse game with the military police. Suspicion and betrayal jeopardize his long-time trust with accomplices and childhood friends. Omar’s feelings quickly become as torn apart as the Palestinian landscape. But it’s soon evident that everything he does is for his love of Nadia.
»The Isolation Wall has divided Palestinian cities from themselves, divided villages, refugee camps, and created cantons where Palestinians live. In many places it isn't clear what is and isn't occupied. For instance, both sides are occupied in Jerusalem. My intention was to create a virtual Palestinian city where the wall is just randomly crossing the city, village and refugee camp with no differences between the two sides.« (Hany Abu-Assad)
Hany Abu-Assad
Born in Nazareth in 1961, Abu-Assad studied technical engineering in Amsterdam, worked as an aircraft engineer, and later on produced TV shows about immigrants. All of his works examine the issues of multicultural coexistence, be it in Europe or the Middle East. He was brought to international fame with Paradise Now that won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Academy Award in the same category.
filmography
1998 Het 14e kippetje (The 14th Chick)
2000 Nazareth 2000 (documentary)
2002 Ford Transit (documentary)
2002 Al Qods Fee Yom Akhar (Rana's Wedding)
2005 Paradise Now
2011 The Courier
2013 Omar