The preview posters for Paradise Now declare, ‘From the most unexpected place, a bold new call for peace’. The trailer suggested the same thing: a Palestinian suicide bomber deciding not to go through with his mission.

But by the time the film was nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Feature at the Oscars, certain audiences started to feel it was not as balanced as it had appeared in the trailer: the bomber’s decision in the film to choose peace is actually short-lived. He goes through with the attack and, as the film’s hero, his act is unarguably portrayed as heroic. It is set to give the 78th Academy Awards one of their most controversial years since the Seventies. [Continue]