Hany Abu-Assad draws on Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Omar, a gripping tale that gets everything right

OMAR: Israeli interrogators make a Palestinian freedom fighter an offer he cannot refuse in this Oscar-nominated film that gets everything right.

Omar film.

ANY film that dares draw on long-running tensions between Israelis and Palestinians for subject matter had better know what it is doing. Otherwise, it can lose the respect of a viewer very quickly indeed.

The political variables that must be negotiated are as numerous as they are complicated. The personal variables, even more so. Everybody involved has their own ways of looking at and living with the conflict.

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Novice actor Adam Bakri is a Palestinian freedom fighter in <i>Omar</i>.

The recent Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee Omar gets everything right. It is the gripping tale of a Palestinian freedom fighter whose life on the West Bank is fraught with dangerous contradictions.

Initially, the one goal in life for Omar (novice actor Adam Bakri) is to kill an Israeli soldier.

<i>Omar</i> won an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

His two best friends, Amjad (Samer Bisharat) and Tarek (Eyad Hourani) have been helping him refine the schematics.

There is a slip-up. The Israeli police haul Omar in for a torrid interrogation and then make him an offer he is not in a position to refuse.

Filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad knows the world he is depicting here all too well, a world where hatred, paranoia and confusion have fused together into a daunting conundrum.

How can one person’s life have any value whatsoever, when no one person can be trusted?

Omar (M)

Director: Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now)

Starring: Adam Bakri, Waleed Zuaiter, Samer Bisharat, Eyad Hourani

Verdict: Four stars. When the only way out is the only way in

Originally published as Hany Abu-Assad draws on Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Omar, a gripping tale that gets everything right