**Film(s) looking forward to most at True/False:** “I like to be surprised.”
**Director(s) that most inspires him:** Almost all movies, but especially Jose Padilha
**How many years he’s been directing:* Six years

Nadav Schirman plans to grab moviegoers’ throats from the beginning of his film and only let go at the end.

​Schirman’s documentary “The Green Prince” tells the story of Mosab, the Palestinian son of a Hamas leader turned intelligence source, and Gonen, an Israeli intelligence handler, and the unlikely friendship they form.

​Schirman’s initial inspiration came from reading Mosab’s book “Son of Hamas.”

​”I was intrigued by the unique insider’s perspective it gave of Hamas, which are our neighbors in Israel, yet we know very little about them,” Schirman says.

​After speaking with Gonen, a handler for Israeli security service Shin Bet, Schirman better understood the relationship between Gonen and Mosab.

“I felt something quite rare, a sense of hope,” Schirman says. “A sense of genuine hope.”

​This sense of hope and intrigue grew when Schirman first met Mosab. As Schirman waited for Mosab in a New York hotel lobby, reports of Osama bin Laden’s death played across the screen. At Mosab’s urging, they went to Ground Zero.

Mosab was trying to rejoice with other Americans.

​”Ten years before, he would have probably cheered for bin Laden,” Schirman says. “But the transformation he had undergone was so great. He was living a real identity crisis, trying to belong to a new culture, a new community.”

​At that point, Schirman knew he had to make “The Green Prince.” Though not directly political in nature, the film demonstrates what happens when two enemies take a risk to trust each other.

“They lost the appurtenance to their system, but they gained a relationship based on truth,” Schirman says.

​The audience follows the risks and developments of the friendship. Schirman wants to take audiences into deep emotional territory.

​He does so by using a technique from director Errol Morris. Schirman has Mosab and Gonen look straight into the audience’s eyes.

When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, people seemed inspired to follow Mosab and Gonen’s lead and follow their own moral compass, Schirman says.

“I saw a sense of hope (in the audience) at Sundance,” Schirman says.

He points to documentary films as a way for audiences to broaden their perspective.

“When Israelis and Palestinians meet one-on-one, there’s almost a sense of brotherhood because we have a common land and a certain closeness,” he says. “Maybe one day, the human level will transpire the political level.”