It has been a month since we had a “Hidden Gem”. So, Happy New Year. The Netflix streaming Palestinian drama feature, ‘Omar’ is our first recommendation for the “Hidden Gem” list. This one-of-a-kind Arabic film is a romantic, semi-war, drama which is set against the backdrop of the Palestine-Israel conflict. This 2013 released feature film also managed to be one of the five foreign films to be nominated for an Oscar during the 86th Academy Awards. The film was screened at multiple film festivals including – the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it went on to win the Special Jury Prize and the 2013 Asia Pacific Screen Awards where it won the Best Feature Film. The film also screened at the United Nations in New York on 1 May 2014.
So, what is Omar about?
Omar, the titular character, is a young Palestinian baker who is in love with Nadia, a young girl living on the other side of the Israeli West Bank barrier. He frequently climbs this barrier to meet the young girl. However, one day, he is caught by the Israeli forces during one of his visits. He is then forced to work as an Israeli informant who is searching for the militant that recently killed an Israeli soldier. Omar agrees, but his actual intentions are shrouded from everyone.
This critically acclaimed drama film was made with a budget of USD 2 million. The movie’s writer-director, Hany Abu-Assad, remarks that he managed to put together the idea of the film in one night, wrote the structure of the story in four hours (essentially) and completed the script in four days. After he secured the aforementioned USD 2 million, the shooting for ‘Omar’ started towards the end of 2012 and he shot it primarily in Nazareth Nablus and the Far’a refugee camp.
Check out ‘Omar’, which is currently available for streaming on Netflix. Check out the trailer for this drama, below: