Star Tribune · Minneapolis, Minnesota · 16 February 2014

CP-2014-021

Stories in and out of time

Hany Abu-Assad’s Oscar-nominated thriller ‘Omar’ is set in the occupied West Bank but has themes of love and betrayal that are timeless.

Colin Covert

Transcribed from the clipping

“Two-time Oscar nominee Hany Abu-Assad is used to making films that generate international attention, praise and debate… His Oscar-nominated ‘Omar’ opening Friday at the Edina Cinema, also deals with the anti-Israeli insurgency, but its scope is broader and its story deeper. A propulsive thriller and a romance, it follows Omar’s courtship of a young woman, Nadia, and how their affair evolves after he’s arrested by the Shin Bet intelligence service.… He freely admits incorporating notions from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in the young lovers’ courtship, and ‘Othello’ in the hero’s growing jealousy. ‘“Omar” is a tragic love story about a lover who makes a bad choice,’ he said. ‘These themes are stronger than life. Shakespeare died, but his stories are still in history because they are about themes that are bigger than us.’ Insecurity makes you fall in love, Abu-Assad said, as you become dependent on your lover for happiness. Insecurity also kills the love, he said, because it’s unattractive. ‘I felt it is “Othello” and I tried to reinterpret it in a different time.’ ‘Good drama is always based on conflict between desires and duty,’ Abu-Assad said. ‘Omar’s conflict is between his desire for Nadia and his duty to his people, his country. All the characters,’ including a tough but fallible Israeli intelligence officer, ‘are torn by the good and bad in them.’… As far as Israeli officials were concerned, he met no resistance whatsoever. ‘Maybe they think I am nothing, why should they interfere with me?’ he said. ‘Israelis are humans who do these jobs in censorship or the secret service who could make your life uneasy. They’re not like evil, they’re people. I think they decided not to make my life difficult because someone will ask me how difficult it was and if I had many bad stories, they would be in a bad light. Now I have no bad stories.’ ‘They are very happy,’ he said with a chuckle, adding, ‘I am happy, too, by the way.’”

Photograph caption

“Adam Bakri as Omar and Leem Lubany as Nadia in ‘Omar.’” and “Oscar-nominated director Hany Abu-Assad, 51, had a boyhood love of movies but became an engineer. Returning to his passion, he made his first feature, a romantic comedy, in 1998.”

Context added by this archive

A Palestinian director explaining his thriller through Romeo and Juliet and Othello, and saying the themes are bigger than the place. He also describes the Israeli security services declining to obstruct him, and works out aloud why: if they made trouble, someone would ask him about it. His age is given here as 51 and as 52 in the Los Angeles Times three weeks later.

Cite this item

"Stories in and out of time," Star Tribune, 16 February 2014. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2014-021. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2014-021

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