Paradise Now

Paradise Now follows two Palestinian friends, Said and Khaled, who work as auto mechanics in Nablus and have known each other since childhood. They are recruited to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, and the film traces the day they spend with explosives concealed on their bodies. One of the men seems settled in his commitment, while the other is torn. When the operation at the border does not go according to plan, the two are separated and each has to work out alone what he will do.

Hany Abu-Assad directed the film, which he also wrote with Bero Beyer and Pierre Hodgson; it was Beyer who produced it. The cast is led by Qais Nashif as Said and Ali Suliman as Khaled, with Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel, Hiam Abbass and Ashraf Barhom in supporting roles. Made for about 2 million dollars, it took roughly 3 million dollars worldwide, a modest return on a small production.

The film sits at the start of the chronological list of Abu-Assad's directing work, ahead of The Courier and The Mountain Between Us. It received a critics' rating of 7.6/10 from 103 reviews, higher than the 7.4/10 it holds on IMDb from 25,000 votes and well above its 6.9/10 on TMDB from 297 votes, so professional reviewers rated it more warmly than audiences did.