Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, California · 5 March 2014

CP-2014-022

A nail-biter after cameras stop rolling

Issues with funding, locations, self doubts — ‘Omar’ director Hany Abu-Assad overcame them all.

Lorraine Ali

Transcribed from the clipping

“Hany Abu-Assad should be used to the tension by now. The Palestinian director has shot most of his films (‘Paradise Now,’ ‘Rana’s Wedding’) in a region known far more for its conflict than its cinema, and his story lines often take place in between tangles of barbed wire and crowded checkpoints. But filming ‘Omar’ on the West Bank and in his hometown of Nazareth almost proved too much — even for Abu-Assad. ‘At the end of the shoot, I told everybody, I’m not going to make another movie,’ said the director. ‘The financing, the crew, the locations, problems with the authorities. I was done. It was that stressful.’ During production, investors dropped out, refugee camp mobs sabotaged the shoot and Abu-Assad, 52, battled his own insecurity as his first Hollywood film, ‘The Courier,’ went straight to DVD. Still, Abu-Assad and his all-Palestinian cast and crew stuck it out, and ‘Omar’ made it all the way to the Oscars. The film, completed for just under $2 million, was nominated for the foreign language film Oscar after winning a jury prize at Cannes and being selected to show at the Toronto and New York film festivals. It opened in late February in a surprisingly wide 70-plus cities across the U.S.”

Photograph caption

“IN ‘OMAR,’ the occupation is a backdrop to love, paranoia and betrayal,” says the film’s director, Hany Abu-Assad, right, with one of his stars, Waleed Zuaiter.” · Kirk McKoy, Los Angeles Times

Context added by this archive

The caption carries the line: in Omar the occupation is a backdrop to love, paranoia and betrayal. The piece is about money, locations and a director telling his crew at the end of the shoot that he would never make another film. An all-Palestinian cast and crew, two million dollars, seventy American cities.

Cite this item

"A nail-biter after cameras stop rolling," Los Angeles Times, 5 March 2014. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2014-022. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2014-022

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