Omar
Arrested after the death of an Israeli soldier, a Palestinian baker agrees to work as an informant, but his true motives and alliances remain hidden. So begins a dangerous game, is he playing his Israeli handler or will he really betray his cause?
1980, Beit Safafa, near Jerusalem, Palestine
20 August 1944, Nazareth, Israel
June 06, 2014
From button-pushing Palestinian writer/director Hany Abu-Assad, who gave us the inflammatory Paradise Now in 2005, comes an equally piercing, if less politically strident look at life under Israeli occupation.
June 06, 2014
Bakri gives a richly detailed performance, often allowing his stoicism to slip and reveal the confused and angry young man within.
June 04, 2014
Abu-Assad does not aim for the Dardennes' breathless immediacy. Rather, the story is laid out in a lucid, diagrammatic way, like a mathematical proof that for someone in Omar's position there are no right choices.
September 07, 2014
Beautifully shot, complicated, smart, and undeniably intense ... well-deserving of its place as the Palestinian nominee for this year's Best Foreign Language Film.
March 03, 2014
A fraught film ...
June 22, 2016
Omar is an obvious political thriller which consistently, insistently attempts to steer us in a particular direction.
February 28, 2014
Abu-Assad offers no solutions here. Instead he paints a portrait of the daily rhythms of the occupation, an endless conflict that has seeped into every aspect of life in the West Bank.
March 13, 2014
It's told with a stark, pitiless clarity that leaves you with fewer answers than before.
July 05, 2014
Doesn't provide easy answers as it builds its pressure cooker environment, putting primary attention on the personalities involved, allowing for a human perspective as it details acts of breathless survival and suffocating paranoia.
March 07, 2014
Omar is romance and thriller. Of course, trust is at the heart of the matter.
February 28, 2014
The film works best as a straightforward melodrama set in an anything but straightforward world.
April 17, 2014
This gripping Palestinian thriller evokes Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers in its depiction of not only the psychological pressures faced by people under occupation, but the murky moral consequences of retaliating.
