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OMAR and BETHLEHEM: “Two Films, One Issue”

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Recently posted on the Jewish Exponent site, an excellent think piece about two films — OMAR, from Palestine, which we are currently screening, and BETHLEHEM, from Israel, which we open Friday. They are both terrific films and both tell stories with the same basic subject matter from different sides of the conflict. The piece is by Greg Salisbury:

Israeli Politics at the Oscars: Two Films, One Issue

February 26, 2014

At the 86th Academy Awards ceremonies on March 2, a film about the morally ambiguous and lethal world inhabited by Palestinian informants and their Israeli handlers will be one of the five nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. Win or lose, the evening will cap a successful year in which the film has won awards across the world.

The film in question is not Bethlehem, Israel’s entry, by first-time director Yuval Adler, which recently won six Ophirs, the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars, as well as the top prize at the 2013 Venice Film Festival. It is Omar, the Palestinian submission, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2013 Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. Abu-Assad was also nominated in 2006 for his film Paradise Now, about a pair of Palestinians preparing to become suicide bombers.
Both films, with two different viewpoints of the same controversial subject, are among the record 76 submissions from countries looking to take home a statuette. Only the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences know why one of these films was selected and not the other — the “arts” part of the academy’s name underscores the subjective nature of judging what is best about the form.
Sahdi Marei as Sanfur in BETHLEHEM