http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/03/agitprop-oscar/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=7255a09d90-2014_3_4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-7255a09d90-41165129
Two new films explore the complexity of Israeli-Arab and Palestinian identity. One is propaganda, the other much more artful. Which do you think got the Oscar nod?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ rules for Best Foreign Language Film provide that each “country” makes a single submission. This year there were 76 submissions—a record. An Academy committee reduced them to a nine-film shortlist, and a second committee chose five nominees, from four countries and one non-country: Belgium (The Broken Circle Breakdown), Cambodia (The Missing Picture), Denmark (The Hunt), Italy (The Great Beauty), and “Palestine” (Omar). The rules also require that a film be first released in the country submitting it. In the past year, Omar has been released in Europe and the United States, but not in “Palestine.”
The Academy bent its rules in the case of Omar, but the nomination presents issues even more important than the rule violations. This essay examines why Omar is characterized as a “Palestinian” film, and what it shows about whether “Palestine”—if it ever actually becomes a country—can live side by side in peace and security with Israel. It also takes a look at a second new film, Bethlehem, which is nearly identical in plot, quality, and in the questions it raises, and whose exceptional artistic merit makes the specific choice of Omar all the more unfathomable.
The synopsis of Omar by Adopt Films, the movie’s U.S. film distributor, is as follows:
Omar is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. On the other side of the wall, the sensitive young baker Omar becomes a freedom fighter who must face painful choices about life and manhood. When Omar is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls into a cat-and-mouse game with the military police. Suspicion and betrayal jeopardize his longtime trust with accomplices and childhood friends Amjad and Tarek, Nadia’s militant brother. Omar’s feelings quickly become as torn apart as the Palestinian landscape. But it’s soon evident that everything he does is for his love of Nadia.
In evaluating Omar as a Palestinian film, consider these facts: The film’s screenwriter and director is Israeli. The actor playing the lead role was born in Israel and attended Tel Aviv University before moving to New York. The actress playing the beautiful Nadia is a 16-year-old born in Israel. The actor playing the key role of Omar’s friend Amjad is another 16-year-old born in Israel. Most of the movie was made in Israel (six of the eight weeks of filming). Moreover, Israel allowed the filmmaker to shoot wherever he wanted—he says “we managed to get permission for all of the places, even the wall,” which functions as a virtual character in the movie (featured prominently in the film’s poster, symbolically holding the young lovers apart).
The very existence of this film is a tribute to Israel—a country where a movie about “occupied Palestine” (a.k.a. the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria), and the “separation wall” (a.k.a. the “security barrier” that in most places is not a wall but a fence) can be made freely, not only without governmental opposition, but with explicit governmental permission.