There can be few more contentious subjects for sympathetic film treatment than suicide bombers. Fortunately, the writer-director Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now is a gripping and powerful thriller that cuts to the conflicted human emotions and tortuous moral dilemmas behind the bloodshed. Even more impressively, this Palestinian drama won both a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination this year.

“Why am I interested in this story?” ponders the 44-year-old Palestinian, who was born and brought up in Nazareth before moving to Amsterdam at 19. “Because it’s part of the Palestinian narrative. But for everybody this is an interesting story, I think.”

Despite earning numerous festival prizes, including one from Amnesty International, Paradise Now has inevitably proved highly controversial. It has been attacked for depicting Israelis as little more than military targets while being over sympathetic to its protagonists, two young Palestinians (Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman) who undertake a botched bombing mission in Tel Aviv.

But Abu-Assad insists that he is a storyteller, not a propagandist. He takes a fairly standard liberal line on Israel and Palestine, arguing for an equal, peaceful, two-state solution. He also contends, a little disingenuously perhaps, that probing the psyches of would-be killers has been a cinematic staple from Samson and Delilah to The Godfather.

“The film is nothing new. It allows us to go somewhere that we can’t go, and understand people we would not want to meet.”

The troubled shooting of Paradise Now would make a riveting drama in its own right. First, a delicate balancing act had to be performed between the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to film in Nablus on the West Bank, where real-life gunfire frequently disrupted the shoot.

“This was a big problem,” nods Abu-Assad. “You go to a city that is almost 40 years under occupation and four years under siege, where nobody can go out without the humiliation of negotiation with the soldiers. We had to negotiate with them to come and go out, and we had to negotiate with local people to make the film. But also you have the danger of death, because every day there is curfew or invasion or bombings.”

First there was the nearby missile blast that drove several European crew members home early. Then the location manager was kidnapped by an Arab group who objected to suicide bombers being portrayed as anything less than devoutly religious martyrs. The late Yassir Arafat was still in charge at this point, and Abu-Assad had to call the former PLO leader’s besieged compound to secure his colleague’s release. The final straw was a mine explosion that killed seven people close to the set, prompting a swift relocation to Nazareth.

Paradise Now was partly financed with Israeli money, and had a limited release in Israel. Even so, it drew protests before the Academy Awards from Israeli families who had lost children in suicide attacks, putting forward a 32,000-name petition that demanded its disqualification from the Best Foreign Language Film nominees. In the end Tsotsi took the Oscar, but Abu-Assad dismisses any suggestions that political considerations may have swayed the vote.

“It doesn’t matter,” he shrugs. “As long as you have no proof you can’t make conclusions. But there were also a lot of Jews and Israelis who appreciated the film; you can’t blame the people who don’t like the movie. They have the right to not appreciate it, and also to make a film from another point of view.”

After 25 years in the Netherlands, Abu-Assad recently moved to Los Angeles. He is working on his English-language debut, L.A. Cairo, a tragicomedy about an Arab actor in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, he is keeping one eye on events in Palestine, and concedes that the election of Hamas may soon consign Paradise Now to the period-drama archives.

“Well, it was not because of my movie that Hamas got elected,” Abu-Assad laughs softly. “But in a way I think it is positive because maybe the current leadership will wake up. And maybe it is also positive because it’s a good test for all sides: a test for the West, a test for Hamas and a test for Israel But my biggest fear is that all three of them will fail.”

One surprising aspect of Paradise Now is its use of black comedy to undercut deadly serious themes. During his research, Abu-Assad unearthed many absurd anecdotes, including a double suicide mission that fell apart when a male bomber objected to the feminist arguments of his female partner in crime.

“He said, ‘No no no! The job of woman is to create life, and the job of man is to kill in order to protect life!’ But she said: ‘No, this is an old idea; now we have equality!’ And they had this big discussion. This is a true story in the police reports. It would make a great movie, but I think it is too much for my film.”

Paradise Now is released on April 14

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