This evening, Adam Bakri and Leem Lubany will be attending the 86th annual Academy Awards ceremony, a dream come true for two fledgling actors from Palestine. A week earlier, they were in South Florida, on the promotion trail for Omar, the movie they star in, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
“I used to stay up to 7 a.m. until the final awards were given out,” recalls Bakri, who plays Omar, a young Palestinian freedom fighter forced to being an informant for the Israelis after being arrested and tortured. “It seemed to go on forever,” he says of the Oscars telecast, “but I would stay up to watch it.”
“I always watched the Oscars, the show, the red carpet,” agrees Lubany, a high school senior who makes her professional film debut in Omar, playing the title character’s girlfriend, for whom he risks his life. “I never really thought of myself walking there, because I never really wanted to be an actress at first. But now, I’m going to the Oscars, so I think that’s a big achievement.”
Omar is directed by Hany Abu-Assad, the most prominent filmmaker in Palestine, whose 2005 movie Paradise Now, about a suicide bomber, was also nominated for an Academy Award.
Of his country’s film output, Bakri says, “We have a few directors, but I wouldn’t call it an industry.” As he says of Abu-Assad and the largely amateur cast, “He knew that we were all new to this. And he just trusted us. He knew how to do things right, but he trusted us to discover it for ourselves. He doesn’t direct a lot. He only interferes when he sees that there’s really something wrong.”
Nearly everything has political overtones in the Middle East, but Bakri does not think Omar is one of them. “Some people took a political side [on the film], but most just saw the movie as a love story,” he says. “It gets a little political here and there, but I don’t think it’s really a political movie.
“It’s about people, it’s about relationships, trust, betrayal, love,” Bakri adds. “It’s very universal. I don’t look at it as a local film at all. Of course politics is the background of the story, the conflict is there of course, but [Omar’s] internal conflict was the most important aspect.”
Both Bakri and Lubany consider themselves optimistic about the Middle East situation, although she says, “For now I can’t see any peace. But I’m hoping for the best and I’m hoping we can finally get to the stage where we can live together. I don’t care what happens. I just want us to live peacefully.”
“Two states for two people. That’s it,” says Bakri. “It sounds easy, but the conflict has been happening for years.”
Until recently, Lubany aspired to be a singer, but the film’s casting drector knows Lubany’s sister. When she described the role to her, she realized that Lubany was ideal for it. As Lubany puts it, “My character is actually a high school girl, young and in love. So it’s not really far from me.” While she has no acting training, she auditioned and won the role with her natural instincts for performing.
Bakri, on the other hand, trained at Tel Aviv University, with a double major in English literature and the arts. Eager to forge an acting career, he relocated to New York where he studies at the Lee Strasberg Studios. When a casting director recalled him from an unsuccessful audition for another project, she contacted him and soon afterwards he was flying off to Israel to win the role after further auditions.
Before Omar, he had only appeared in one other movie, an 18-minute short called Unfold, also about young lovers, set against a backdrop of the Arabic revolution.
He knows it is unusual that his first feature film has garnered so much attention, including the Oscars exposure. “It means a lot. Especially because when you put your heart in a project and you feel like it is getting the recognition that it deserves, it’s such an amazing, gratifying feeling,” says Bakri. “Like I can’t even explain how proud and grateful I am.”
Whether or not Omar picks up an Oscar, Bakri and Lubany have gotten the attention of Hollywood. He already two future projects, a feature film in English and a television series in Arabic, both starting later this year.
“I don’t have any interesting projects yet,” shrugs Lubany. “I have to fly back home right after the Oscars and finish my final year of school. But I plan to move to the United States after graduation and resume my acting career.”
OMAR. Director: Hany Abu-Assad; Cast: Adam Bakri, Leem Lubany, Eyad Hourani, Samer Bisharat. In Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles. Playing at select local venues.