OMAR EXPOSES LIFE ON THE WEST BANK AS NEVER BEFORE
Under Israeli occupation, life in the West Bank is graphically displayed as in Omar, directed by Hany Abu-Assad. In his late teens, muscular Omar (played by Adam Bakri) has a girlfriend, Nadja (Leem Lubany), who is passionate about him; using knotted ropes, he has to crawl over the Israeli side of the wall to see her, and he has been shot at. He has two boyfriends, Amjad (Samer Bisharat) and Tarek (Eyad Hourani), the latter connected to a resistance organization. One day, he evades another gunshot only to find that Israeli security officers find him soon after on foot. After giving them his ID, they ask him to stand on a rock, a humiliating balancing act, so he objects and ends up with a bloodied nose. Relating that incident to his two friends, Tarek decides upon retaliation—to shoot an Israel guard post one night, when he orders Jamek to fire. Although they apparently escape undetected, Omar is picked up one day. We see him tortured to get a confession, left in solitary confinement, and when allowed into the general population he is approached by someone who pretends to be a fatherly Muslim, cautioning him not to confess. When Omar says, “I will never confess,” those words are interpreted to mean guilt, so an Israeli intelligence officer (Waleed F. Zuaiter) makes him an offer: If you agree to report who shot the soldier, I will release you from prison. He agrees and reports his “offer” to Jamek and Tarek. The latter plans an ambush, but the Israelis arrive instead to shoot, pursue, and arrest. Another torture scene. Another deal. Omar’s relations with his girlfriend deteriorate, he refuses to make the obvious inference who the traitor to the ambush was, but he then designs his own type of ambush to bring closure. Palestine’s submission to best foreign film of 2013, the Political Film Society has nominated Omar as best film of 2014 in raising consciousness about human rights as well as best exposé of 2014 for revealing how Israel governs the West Bank. MH