Paradise Now

Paradise Now has no mainstream actors, large amount of funding or large special effects. Neither was it shot in a safe location looking like the troubled Palestine. With the virtue of not falling into a documentary style and not looking for supporting any of the parts, this internationally awarded film is an intense, realistic analysis of the reasons that bring young Palestinians to kill themselves in terrorist attacks.

The film explains the story of Kahled and Said, two old friends that are voluntarily recruited for immolating themselves in Tel Aviv. After spending a last night with their respective families, and without being able to say goodbye to them, they tie the bombs to their bodies and bring them to the border with Israel. But things happen to be different than expected and the two young men get separated. Each of them will have to face their destiny and convictions.

Located in Nablus, a Palestinian city 60 km in the north of Jerusalem, the shooting had daily setbacks. Arguments with the Israeli Army, denied permissions and misunderstandings with some local groups that thought they where shooting a film against Palestine were some of the problems they had to deal with. But the last straw came when an Israeli missile crashed in a nearby car, six of the German crew member left and the whole team had to be moved to Nazared.

However, besides the problems that shooting in a conflicted area can bring and the controversies of treating the conflict itself, Paradise Now stands out because it succeeds in talking about the things that need to be talked about. After several ancient films, quite restricted to cult circles, the director Hany Abu-Assad has brought Palestinian cinema to the international panorama and showed again that the Seventh Art can also be a tool to show everyone the injustices, the absurdities and over all the uselessness of fanaticism.