Hany Abu-Assad: Love, betrayal and action from Palestine
It is a rare occurrence when a two times Oscar nominated director visits Arabian Film Days – or Norway for that matter. Hany Abu-Assad, known for his complex characters and depictions of life under occupation, is this year’s special guest at Arabian Film Days. Meet the director of Omar in this exclusive interview.
Hany Abu-Assad is Arabian Film Days’ main guest and Palestine’s most famous filmmaker. With films such as Rana’s Wedding (2002) and Paradise Now (2005), the director has depicted occupation in Palestine and the people who suffer from it from different angles. This year’s festival gives you the dark thriller Omar.
The West Bank as a backdrop
This is the third time Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad makes a film from the West Bank. Rana’s Wedding from 2002 was a charming film about searching for love during the second intifada. The critically acclaimed Golden Globe winner Paradise Now deals with gloomier themes. It portrays two suicide bombers’ last 48 hours before a planned attack in Tel Aviv. However, it is Abu-Assads newest film Omar that will be screened during Arabian Film Days.
Simple drama has never been Abu-Assads style. Even though he denies being a political director, his movies tend to bring up themes that most people define as strongly politicized. Instructive film is not for Abu-Assad. He prefers using elements from the thriller genre to tell important stories about real and complex human beings.
In Paradise Now he did the almost impossible. In the midst of the Bush era, the film made Americans hand out numerous award nominations to a film about Palestinian suicide bombers. Who would have thought it possible for such a movie to be nominated for an Academy Award as well as receiving a Golden Globe.
Complex characters
”What’s next?” one of the selected suicide bombers in Paradise Now asks after having gotten the bomb equipment attached to his body. “Two angels will come and fetch you”, is the quick and easy reply they get. It is enough for Said and Khaled to start doubting their planned actions.
Despite the gloomy theme in Paradise Now, Abu-Assad uses dark humour and absurd scenes to humanize the main characters and explain why they act like they do. At the same time, Paradise Now gives no defence, nor hands out hero or martyr status, to suicide bombers. Abu-Assad has become known as a director who manages to show the good and the evil in human beings, as well as the doubts that occur in the intersections.
− It is impossible to be always good and in reality life must be a balance of good and bad, Abu-Assad says in our interview. – Yes, my characters are complex and self-destructive, but so are many people in real life. Environment and circumstances can propel any of us in such a direction, says the director.
Omar
Abu-Assad’s latest film Omar tells the story of two young people in love, captured on different sides of the wall. It is also a film about torture and collaboration, about how occupation creates betrayal between human beings. This is Abu-Assad’s universe; this is the Palestinian universe. A universe that has only become darker during the past few years.
− Omar is a more modern film than the previous ones, says Abu-Assad. And even though Omar has been called a “Romeo and Juliet story under occupation”, the director claims that this is an incorrect interpretation. − To me it is more like Othello under occupation, Abu-Assad insists.
Love, betrayal and prison
Omar hangs naked by his arms in a dark room. There is blood coming out of his ears. A big scar defines his cheekbone. The torture in prison is raw and brutal. The Israeli interrogator is an omniscient Big Brother. Insects are crawling over the cold prison floor.
Outside of prison, the tenderness between Omar and Nadia is vivrant. Love is a hand softly stroking Nadia’s cheek. Even though the actors are mainly amateurs, Adam Bakri, who comes from a well-known acting family, is sensational in the role as the young, amorous, humiliated man.
− Omar is about betrayal. It’s a movie that deals with what happens to human beings that are forced to collaborate against their brothers and sisters, Abu-Assad explains in a TV-interview with Huffington Post.
On walls and people
Omar’s main characters are like you and me. They eat Sunday dinner with their families, fall in love and dream of honeymoons to Paris. They joke with friends and imitate Hollywood actors. But between them there is a wall that splits up neighbourhoods and lovers. A wall that can be climbed, risking your own life.
− The wall is built between Palestinians, not between Palestine and Israel, Abu-Assad says in an American TV-interview. – It is built to keep Palestinians separated, to make their lives difficult.
Abu-Assad does not see himself as a political director, nonetheless he is clear in his speech. – That is why it is good to put the wall in this film, he says in the same TV-interview. – It makes people ask themselves these questions, he continues.
A darker film
Omar is notably darker than the previous films, both in imagery and thematics. The images are gloomy and powerful. The faces are expressive. The wall, which in certain scenes takes up the whole screen, stands as an image of the insurmountable obstacles that limit people’s opportunities, their freedom and love.
When Omar, with the help of a rope, climbs the wall to meet his beloved, he does it with greater difficulties as the story proceeds. The obstacles crated by occupation become bigger and bigger.
- In Omar the protagonist desperately tries to protect what is most important to him, what he loves. He is trying to do good, but in doing so he ends up destroying what he cares about the most, Abu-Assad explains. – Then, once he sees this, he realizes that the only path to redemption is to sacrifice himself for his love, for his country, for his friends - destroying himself.
Ethical dilemmas
During the production of his previous films, Abu-Assad had trouble with Israeli security forces. During the making of Omar, this was not an issue. Nonetheless, the shooting itself offered some ethical dilemmas for the director and his crew. In Abu-Assad’s opinion, the hardest thing was to shoot the scenes from the refugee camp, Al Far’a, south of Jenin.
In the beginning, the young boys of the camp were hostile towards the strangers. While these boys live in poverty with no rights to travel anywhere, the film crew showed up with expensive equipment. The crew had to explain that it was their story they were trying to tell, which, after some time, was accepted by the boys.
− It felt like we were abusing their territory to make a good movie. The next day we could just leave, whereas they had to stay, Abu-Assad says to Huffington Post.
From aircraft technician to film director
Abu-Assad himself worked as an aircraft technician until he decided to follow his life-long dream to become a filmmaker. The director, who tells us that he is inspired by Miloš Forman, Francis Ford Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci and Abbas Kiarostami, is more concerned with the people he depicts than the politics behind.
Abu-Assad insists that if his films are political, it is only secondarily. Nevertheless, many of us will agree that Hany Abu-Assad has made a great favour to the Palestinians by telling their stories in films that any viewer anywhere can relate to. So maybe he is right when he claims that his films are first and foremost about complex human beings.
During Arabian Film Days, Omar will be screened Friday 4th of April at 6 pm, Saturday 5th of April at 7:45 pm and Sunday 6th of April at 8:45 pm. All screenings take place at Kino Victoria. After the screenings on Friday and Saturday, Hany Abu-Assad will be present for a director’s talk.
The screenings of Omar and invite of Hany Abu-Assad is a collaboration between Oslo Palestine Film Festival (OPFF), Transnational Arts Production (TRAP) and Arabian Film Days.