Oscars 2014: Select nominees for foreign-language film

“Omar,” directed by Hany Abu-Assad, is a dramatic thriller of shifting allegiances as a young man is coaxed into cooperating with Israeli authorities in capturing a fugitive.

“The film is not about the conflict, it’s really about love, friendship, and betrayal and about the genre thriller,” Abu-Assad said.

Nevertheless, Abu-Assad, an Oscar nominee for his 2005 film “Paradise Now,” is not reluctant to give the film’s storytelling a definite point of view. “The movie is pro-Palestinian, and I’m not apologetic about it,” he said. “If I am not pro my own people, who should I be pro? I want the freedom for my people, and I am not ashamed of that.” (Adopt Films / AP Photo)

Feb. 21, 2014 12 PM PT

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By Mark Olsen

When the gripping thriller “The Hunt” first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, lead actor Mads Mikkelsen picked up a Best Actor prize for his role as a small-town schoolteacher wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a young girl. Many saw the film as something of the flipside to director Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 international breakthrough “The Celebration.”

“When I did ‘Festen,’ or ‘The Celebration,’ I felt I’d completed something,” Vinterberg said. “I couldn’t go further down that road. It was an explosion, the ending of a certain time and place. Now I’ve matured and things are different, and I had to find a new way of expressing a kind of similar theme about life and truth.”

(Magnolia Pictures / AP Photo)

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