Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad pulled off a tricky balancing act with his 2005 Paradise Now. In profiling the everyday lives of a couple of would-be suicide bombers, the movie created an eerie sense of authenticity (and occasional absurdity) while not grinding a heavy political ax. It picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-Language Film in the process.
Abu-Assad’s new film, also Oscar-nominated, tries something similar: to humanize people stuck in the cycle of violence in the Palestinian community of the occupied West Bank.