Hany Abu-Assad directed the often-debated 2006 film Paradise Now, which won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and was also nominated for the Academy Award in the same category (representing Palestine for the first time in history). The story of two Palestinian men preparing for a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Paradise Now made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Blue Angel Award for Best European Film, the Berliner Morgenpost Readers‘ Prize and the Amnesty International Award for Best Film.
Abu-Assad previously had an international hit with 2002’s Rana’s Wedding, the story of a young Jerusalem woman trying to get married before four o’ clock. The film was selected for the Cannes Critics Week and went on to win prizes at Montpellier, Marrakech, Bastia and Cologne.
Abu-Assad’s other credits include 2011’s English language The Courier, starring Jeffery Dean Morgan, Til Schweiger and Mickey Rourke, and the 2002 documentary, Ford Transit, the portrait of a Ford Transit taxi driver and the resilient inhabitants of Palestinian territories.
Abu-Assad was born in Nazareth, Palestine, in 1961. After having studied and worked as an airplane engineer in the Netherlands for several years, Abu-Assad entered the world of cinema as a producer. He produced the 1994 feature film Curfew, directed by Rashid Masharawi. In 1998, Abu-Assad directed his first feature, The 14Th Chick, from a script by writer Arnon Grunberg.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
