Paradise Now (Arabic: الجنّة الآن, romanized: al-Janna al-Laan) is a 2005 psychological drama film directed by Hany Abu-Assad.

"[3] Paradise Now follows Palestinian childhood friends Said and Khaled who live in Nablus and have been recruited for suicide attacks in Tel Aviv.

The pair record videos glorifying God and their cause, and bid their unknowing families and loved ones goodbye, while trying to behave normally to avoid arousing suspicion.

While in a car with Suha (Lubna Azabal), a woman he has fallen in love with, he explains that his father was an ameel (a "collaborator", or Palestinian working for the Israelis), who was executed for his actions.

The film ends with a long shot of Said sitting on a bus carrying Israeli soldiers, slowly zooming in on his eyes, and then suddenly cuts to white.

Hany Abu-Assad and co-writer Bero Beyer started working on the script in 1999, but it took them five years to get the story before cameras.

Puerto Rico too, enjoys a similar ability to submit entries even though it does not have full United Nations representation, which was used as a basis to launch accusations of a double standard.

However, Israeli officials, including Consul General Ehud Danoch and Consul for Media and Public Affairs Gilad Millo, tried to extract a guarantee from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that Paradise Now would not be presented in the ceremony as representing the state of Palestine, despite the fact it was introduced as such in the Academy Awards' official website.

This decision angered director-writer Hany Abu-Assad, who said it represented a slap in the face for the Palestinian people and their national identity.

[13] On March 1, 2006, a group representing Israeli victims of suicide bombings asked the Oscar organizers to disqualify the film.

The site's consensus states: "This film delves deeply into the minds of suicide bombers, and the result is unsettling.

"[15] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[16] Stephen Holden, in his October 28, 2005 article in the New York Times, applauded the suspense and plot twists in the film, and the risks involved in humanizing suicide bombers, saying "it is easier to see a suicide bomber as a 21st-century Manchurian Candidate - a soulless, robotic shell of a person programmed to wreak destruction - than it is to picture a flesh-and-blood human being doing the damage.

"[17] In contrast, in a February 7, 2006 article for Ynetnews entitled "Anti-Semitism Now", Irit Linor criticized the movie as a "quality Nazi film".