Hany Abu-Assad sits down in the busy bar of London's Mayfair Hotel, a little jet-lagged. It's been one year, almost to the day, since his latest film, Omar, won the Un Certain Regard jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Since then, he's been touring country after country with the movie which has been garnering almost universal praise.
Omar tells the story of a young Palestinian coerced into collaborating with the Israeli authorities, but even the right-wing Israeli press has been giving it five-star reviews. It's in stark contrast to Abu-Assad's 2005 film, Paradise Now, which dealt with two Palestinian men preparing a suicide bomb attack in Israel. While it won a Golden Globe and garnered an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, it drew fire from the Israeli media and authorities.
Omar, however, has been a different experience. "There is no official reaction," the 52-year-old director says. "They ignore it and I think it's smart of them. They've become smarter. Previously, they made fools of themselves."
Back when he shot Paradise Now, he had "tonnes of difficulties" with the Israeli army. "Wherever I went, I'd tell about the difficulties I had." This time, he had a smooth passage, shooting in and around the bitterly disputed Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank.
That was indeed wise on the part of the Israeli authorities, for Omar has echoed Paradise Now's worldwide success, gaining Abu-Assad a second Oscar nomination for best foreign film.
Arguably what makes Omar so accessible is that it's not, superficially at least, a polemic. "It's a love story set in the thriller genre," Abu-Assad says, explaining that he initially wanted to make a movie about paranoia. "When you have no trust in others or in yourself, you have no life. Trust is important in society. I thought, 'What is the best story that can show this feeling of paranoia?' And you know that when you're in love, and you suspect your lover, you've become paranoid."
Omar (played by Adam Bakri) is a Palestinian baker in love with teenager Nadia (Leem Lubany), the younger sister of his friend Tarek (Eyad Hourani). Theirs is a sensitive courtship, but things go awry when Omar, Tarek and their buddy Amjad (Samer Bisharat) carry out a sniper attack on a Israeli military outpost, killing a soldier. Soon afterwards, Omar is captured, interrogated and tortured - just the beginning of an increasingly complex web of lies and betrayals that he finds himself in.