The Green Prince, screened to acclaim at Sundance in early 2014 is a searing documentary from Nadav Schirman that investigates the story of Mosab Yousef, son of Palestinian agitator and Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who agreed to spy on his father for Israeli security agency Shin Bet.
Motivated both by disillusionment with Hamas and also perhaps by the thrill of high-stakes subterfuge, but with inevitably compromised loyalties to both his father and his Israeli handler Gonen Ben Yitzhak, he becomes overwhelmed by playing each side off the other and begins to question where his alliances truly lie and whether he is really in control.
Based on Mosab’s bestselling memoir Son of Hamas, Schirman’s film – produced by the team behind the phenomenally successful docs Man on Wire and Searching for Sugarman – incorporates archive footage, fast-paced reconstructions and interviews with Mosab and Yitzhak to create an utterly gripping portrait of deception and corruption against the backdrop of this most agonised of conflicts.
