The Idol

Hany Abu-Assad's bio-pic recounts pop star Mohammed Assaf's journey to fame, beginning in 2005 in the Gaza Strip as Mohammed (Qais Attaallah) forms a band with his sister, Nour (Heba Attaallah), and their friends, Omar (Abdalkarim Abubaraka) and Ahmad (Ahmad Qassim). Since their parents aren't exactly encouraging, they pay a smuggler to secure used instruments, but he's only interested in their money and his henchmen beat up Mohammed so badly that he ends up in the hospital. Things improve when music teacher Mr. Kamal (Amer Hlehel) loans them instruments and they start playing wedding parties. But then Nour's kidney starts to fail, and while she undergoes dialysis, Omar drops out of the band, Ahmad gets a job at a counterfeit McDonald's ("WacDonalds"), and Mohammed continues on as a solo artist. By 2012, Mohammed (now played by Tawfeek Barhom) is attending college and driving a taxi, but he dreams of winning Arab Idol, so he auditions for the competition in Ramallah via Skype (the borders are closed to travel), but things go wrong, so he tries to figure out a way to get to Cairo. It's a treacherous journey, but his in-person audition is successful and he eventually moves on to the finals in Beirut, knowing that he might never be able to return to Gaza. An uplifting, if also disappointingly conventional, success story (featuring a cameo from the real-life Mohammed), this is a strong optional purchase. (K. Fennessy)