Hany Abu-Assad, Paradise Now

Using classic film technique in Paradise Now to present his three main characters - a pair of Palestinian boyhood friends who are enlisted for a suicide mission in Jerusalem and a foreign-educated Palestinian woman who knows nothing of their plans - writer-director Hany Abu-Assad has given a "face" to this fearsome affliction of today's world. This has made his film controversial and given Abu-Assad international attention. He has, however, been making films for the past dozen years. A Palestinian who lived and worked in the Netherlands since he studied and worked as an airplane engineer, Abu-Assad made his first film in the early 1990s, the 1992 short Paper House, which he wrote and directed and was broadcast on Dutch television. Since 2000 he has partnered with producer Bero Beyer. Their first production, Rana's Wedding, about a Jerusalem woman's determination to marry before 4 o'clock, was selected for the Cannes' Critics Week. That same year Abu-Assad's documentary about a taxi driver, Ford Transit, was shown at Sundance. For Rana's Wedding he won the Nestor Almendros award for courage in filmmaking at New York's Human Rights Film Festival.

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