Film festival favourite Theeb opens in UAE cinemas

In Theeb, for the first time, members of the Bedouin community around Wadi Rum – including the revelatory debutant child actor Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat in the title role – take most of the parts, despite the fact that they had never even set foot in a cinema before.

Theeb by Naji Abu Nowar, below, is about a Bedouin boy helping a British soldier navigate the desert. Courtesy Abu Dhabi Film Festival; AFP

Last year's international film-festival favourite Theeb comes home on Thursday, March 19, with its release in cinemas across the Middle East.

Filmed in Jordan, the movie screened at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival in October after getting good receptions in Venice, Toronto and London. It is set in 1916 and tells the story of a Bedouin’s coming of age as he helps a British soldier reach safety in the desert of what was then the Ottoman province of Hijaz, now part of Saudi Arabia.

The film is unique in that, for the first time, members of the local Bedouin community around Wadi Rum – including the revelatory debutant child actor Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat in the title role – take most of the parts in the film, despite the fact that they had never even set foot in a cinema before.

With his polished English tones and distinctly western attire, director Naji Abu Nowar at first seems a million miles removed from the rolling dunes of Wadi Rum but, in fact, the film was a highly personal project.

“I’m half-English and half-Jordanian,” he says. “I come from a very traditional family, not Bedouin, but I have in-laws from the big Bedouin tribes. I’ve been exposed to that culture a lot in my life and love their storytelling and culture, so it was really exciting for me to go make a film with them and learn more.”

The learning experience was mutual, it seems, as the Bedouin cast members were largely unfamiliar with the very concept of cinema.

“The cast were pretty much totally new to film,” says Nowar. “Some had shown film crews round when they visited Wadi Rum, but that was the extent of it.

“The first time the Bedouin team went into a cinema was at Venice [International Film Festival, where Nowar won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director]. I think we had the biggest delegation ever in Venice, it was certainly the biggest of 2014. There was such a community feel on the team that a lot of them just booked their own flights, too.

“The accreditation people were all whispering to each other when we turned up, like ‘how many of them?’ ”

The film has been a huge hit on the festival circuit. It received a Fipresci Award for Best Narrative Film at ADFF and a standing ovation, while Nowar was named Variety's Arab Filmmaker of the Year. Its highest-profile success was the Venice win, however.

Was Nowar surprised by how the film has been received by western audiences?

“It sounds bad to say I’m surprised how well it’s done with various audiences, but in our first four festival appearances we had three standing ovations, which is crazy,” he says.

“I think it’s partly that this is a culture that hasn’t been shown on film before. There’s been some shoots in the locations, but this has the whole culture.

“At its heart, it’s a film about a young boy going on this epic journey, told from a point-of-view style. With point-of-view style, if the audience is able to connect with the character, which everyone says they can thanks to Jac’s wonderful performance, if you’re connecting with him and joining him in his journey, then you’re emotionally invested in the movie and you have a powerful experience, which seems to have happened.”

Nowar is particularly excited about the film’s regional release.

“The reception’s been different here,” he says. “Audiences feel that they own the film and are proud of it. There isn’t a thriving, huge industry pumping out films here and people were really pleased to have something positive to get behind and feel proud of.”

Nowar is looking at a follow-up to Theeb, though much will depend on its box-office performance.

"I have another Jordanian film set five to 10 years later as a potential sequel, exploring the repercussions of what we've seen in Theeb," he says. "I'd love to bring the cast back together, but it's at the very early development stages.

"It's a big war film, so I'll need a lot of investment. Hopefully, if Theeb succeeds, I can leave the financiers to make it happen while I go back to England to make an English-language film."

If the sequel happens, one wrong Nowar hopes to right is the lack of women in Theeb.

“Theeb’s mother was originally a big character in the screenplay, but it was this community’s first time to experience film and in that culture you can’t film women,” he says. “We didn’t really want to bring an actress from Amman and couldn’t find one anyway because she’d stick out like a sore thumb.

“We don’t have that method-­actor culture where Hilary Swank comes down for a year to live with the Bedouin, so it wouldn’t have worked and we deci­­ded­ to remove those scenes.

“That said, I’m confident now the community has seen that we’re professional and we respect their culture and want to tell their story, that I will be able to get female characters into the next one.

“There are so many strong female characters in that culture and it would be a shame if their stories weren’t also told.”

• Theeb is out in cinemas on Thursday, March 19