Theeb

There’s a certain joy to be felt when discovering a new voice in film. Taking the risk to sit down in and watch a director’s first feature, witnessing how they grapple and contend with cinema. Each year, there are great debuts, to be sure, but in 2015, it seemed to me to be unusually strong …

Echoes of Rudyard Kipling adventure yarns and Hollywood’s more pessimistic classic Westerns permeate Theeb, the directorial debut of Jordan-based filmmaker Naji Abu Nowar, whose film was also shot in that region and features non-professional actors from one of Jordan’s last nomadic Bedouin tribes to settle down.