Omar
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Synopsis
A tense, gripping thriller about betrayal, suspected and real, in the Occupied Territories. Omar (Adam Bakri) is a Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girl Nadja (Leem Lubany). By night, he’s ready to risk his life to strike at the Israeli military with his childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat). Arrested after the killing of an Israeli soldier and tricked into an admission of guilt by association, he agrees to work as an informant. So begins a dangerous game—is he playing his Israeli handler (Waleed F. Zuaiter) or will he really betray his cause? And who can he trust on either side? Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) has made a dynamic, action-packed drama about the insoluable moral dilemmas and tough choices facing those on the frontlines of a conflict that shows no sign of letting up.

Hany Abu-Assad (Director)
Hany Abu-Assad directed the often debated 2006 film Paradise Now, which won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and was also nominated for the Academy Award in the same category (representing Palestine). The story of two Palestinian men preparing for a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Paradise Now made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Blue Angel Award for Best European Film, the Berliner Morgenpost Readers' Prize and the Amnesty International Award for Best Film.

Abu-Assad previously had an international hit with 2002’s Rana's Wedding, the story of a young Jerusalem woman trying to get married before four o’ clock. The film was selected for the Cannes Critics Week and went on to win prizes at Montpellier, Marrakech, Bastia and Cologne.

Abu-Assad’s other credits include 2011’s English-language The Courier, starring Jeffery Dean Morgan, Til Schweiger and Mickey Rourke, and the 2002 documentary, Ford Transit, the portrait of a Ford Transit taxi driver and the resilient inhabitants of Palestinian territories.

Abu-Assad was born in Nazareth, Palestine, in 1961. After having studied and worked as an airplane engineer in the Netherlands for several years, Abu-Assad entered the world of cinema as a producer. He produced the 1994 feature film Curfew, directed by Rashid Masharawi. In 1998, Abu-Assad directed his first feature, The Fourteenth Chick, from a script by writer Arnon Grunberg.