20 years of ‘Paradise Now’: an unflinching portrait of occupation and resistance

On January 31, 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made history, albeit unintentionally. On that night, as the Academy’s president Sid Ganis and actor Mira Sorvino read out the nominees for the 78th Oscars at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, they reached a category that rarely makes global headlines but carries major weight for international cinema: Best Foreign Language Film.

At first, the lineup was predictable. France, Germany, and Italy – the usual European strongholds – all secured nominations. But then, a shift. South Africa’s Tsotsi marked a rare Global South presence. And then, something unprecedented: for the first time in its history, the Academy had nominated a movie from Palestine.

This moment wasn’t just about filmmaking; it was an unintended but seismic act of recognition. By shining a spotlight on Paradise Now – Hany Abu-Assad’s psychological drama spanning 27 gruelling, fateful hours in the life of two childhood friends who have spent their entire lives under occupation – the Academy had finally acknowledged Palestinian existence; not just as a people, but as a cinematic force. With this historic nomination, a deeply human story of occupation, resistance, and the impossible fight for true freedom beamed onto film’s biggest stage.

Initially, this nomination barely registered in mainstream media. The focus was on Brokeback Mountain leading the pack with eight nominations. But within days, Paradise Now’s inclusion ignited controversy, exposing (yet again) the hypocrisy of Western institutions when it comes to Palestine. What started as a quiet recognition of Palestinian artistry suddenly became a battleground over erasure, resistance, and the politics of storytelling.

The backlash came swiftly. Pro-Israel groups in the US, including the Zionist state’s Consul General and Consul for Media and Public Affairs, protested the movie’s listing as a submission from Palestine, disputing Palestine’s status as an internationally recognised state. The Academy – despite having accepted nominations from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Puerto Rico without issue in the past – buckled under pressure. They reclassified Paradise Now as a submission from the “Palestinian Authority”, even though it had already competed (and won) at the Golden Globes as a film from Palestine.

For Abu-Assad, this wasn’t just bureaucratic pedantry – it was an erasure of identity. “It’s a slap in the face to the Palestinian people,” he said at the time. After pushback from Abu-Assad and others, the Academy settled on a middle ground: “Palestinian Territories” – a compromise that, as usual, leaned in favour of the oppressor. But for Palestinians, such concessions weren’t new. Whether in art, politics, or even sports, Palestinian existence on the global stage has long been conditional –  subject to constant negotiation and dilution.

If Paradise Now’s nomination rattled pro-Israel groups and the right-wing press, its subject matter was even more provocative. Scores of Western media outlets quickly latched onto the idea that the film endorsed and celebrated terrorism. This, of course, ignored the nuance of Abu-Assad’s storytelling or the crimes of the occupation.

Paradise Now follows Said (Kais Nashif) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), two friends from Nablus who, at a moment’s notice, are chosen to carry out an attack in Tel Aviv. As the clock ticks down, they hesitate; not out of moral reckoning, but out of fear, uncertainty, and the weight of losing the lives they have spent living under occupation – lives that have eluded so much of what most people take for granted. The film doesn’t glorify violence; it interrogates the necessity of violent resistance under a brutal occupation that treats your very existence with malevolence.

Abu-Assad’s film is an unapologetic and devastating exploration of what occupation does to the human psyche. Through Said and Khaled’s thoughts, conversations and hesitation – captured poignantly by Abu-Assad’s excellent script and director of photography Antoine Héberlé’s camera – it dismantles the reductive narratives around Palestinian resistance. It shows that the violence imposed by the occupier dictates the nature of the resistance.

In one of Paradise Now‘s most memorable scenes, Said is challenged by Suha (Lubna Azabal), a woman he is infatuated with, on his commitment to militancy as a form of resistance. “There are other ways to keep the cause alive,” she suggests. Said is defiant. “That’s not for us to decide,” he says. “The occupation defines the resistance.” This isn’t about moral binaries. It’s about people whose lives have been shaped by an unending system of control, apartheid and racism, where even the very concept of a future is a privilege denied. 

This reality is inescapable throughout Paradise Now’s 90-minute runtime. The film opens at a checkpoint – a reminder of the humiliation Palestinians endure every day in their own land; of the apartheid, where Israeli settlers with yellow license plates move freely through stolen land while the land’s Indigenous people are forced to endure endless checkpoints, searches, and indignities as they navigate unpaved roads in dinghy cars.

In an early scene, a bomb explodes in Nablus. The reaction is muted. It is almost like this is a regular occurrence – precisely because it is. Death has been normalised to the point of mundanity. Later, Said is asked if he’s ever been to a cinema. He replies that he has – when he burned one down in Israel. When the occupation dictates every facet of your life, even art and entertainment aren’t spaces of escape.

One of the Paradise Now‘s most defining moments comes when Suha confronts Khaled after she learns of the attack and realises she may never see him or Said again. “There is no paradise – it only exists in your head!” she bellows at him. Khaled’s response is chilling:

I’d rather have paradise in my head than live in this hell.

Abu-Assad doesn’t set out to celebrate political violence, but he refuses to condemn it through a Western moral lens. Instead, he examines why someone like Said or Khaled, fresh-faced young men barely in their twenties, would be driven to lay down their lives to resist the occupation. In an interview, Abu-Assad said that had he been born in the occupied West Bank instead of Nazareth, he might have ended up like Said or Khaled himself.

Two decades after Khaled uttered these words, when Paradise Now premiered at the Berlinale in February 2005, the harrowing realities of life under occupation in Palestine have not changed. They have only worsened. Settlements have expanded. Raids in the occupied West Bank have intensified. Israel continues to pulverise Gaza despite a so-called ceasefire in the ongoing genocide – during which, among other atrocities, Israeli soldiers used an 80-year-old Palestinian man as a human shield for eight hours before executing him and his wife. The Zionist state’s violence, backed by its Western allies, grows more emboldened by the day. And in this context, the urgency of Abu-Assad’s poignant film has never been greater.

Beyond its political weight, Paradise Now has also had a monumental impact on the burgeoning Palestinian film industry. It won Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and grossed over $3.5 million worldwide – an unprecedented achievement for Palestinian cinema. Eight years later, Abu-Assad’s Omar would secure another Oscar nomination, this time officially listed as a film not from the Authority or the Territories but just Palestine.

In fact, Paradise Now’s influence rippled through the industry. Like Abu-Assad, Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman has since gained global recognition, whose movies have competed for the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival on multiple occasions. Farah Nabulsi’s The Present, a short about checkpoint-apartheid in the occupied West Bank, won an award at the BAFTAs and was nominated for an Oscar. Darin Sallam’s Farha, the first internationally co-produced feature film about the Nakba, premiered at TIFF in 2021 and reached millions after being acquired by Netflix. Three of the five SWANA-region films that were shortlisted for next month’s Oscars are Palestinian productions. One of these three, No Other Land, made it out of the shortlist and is up for the Best Documentary award. Paradise Now laid the groundwork, proving that Palestinian stories belong on the silver screen – not just as war footage or sympathy-viewing, but as fully realised narratives of resistance and indomitability.

Perhaps the most important part of Paradise Now’s enduring legacy is that it compelled the Academy to confront the Palestinian resistance on a global stage. Because, at its core, that is what Paradise Now is about: the refusal to be erased – the unyielding drive to resist until Palestine is free, from the river to the sea. 

Paradise Now is available to stream on Netflix in the United Arab Emirates