Theeb

Theeb (2014)

ذيب

Set in the Arabian Desert of 1916, the film follows Theeb, a young Bedouin boy, and his brother Hussein as they leave the safety of their tribe to venture on a treacherous journey at the dawn of the Great Revolt. If Theeb is to survive he must quickly learn about adulthood, trust and betrayal.

Date of release
2014-10-26
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (201)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Adventure, Thriller, Drama
Director
Naji Abu Nowar

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Jordan
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

Theeb is a 2014 co-produced by Bassel Ghandour period drama thriller film co-written with Bassel Ghandour and directed by Naji Abu Nowar. It is a coming-of-age story about a Bedouin boy, Theeb, who must survive in the wide-open Wadi Rum desert. The film takes place during the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, in the wake of the Great Arab Revolt against the ruling Ottoman Empire. The film used non-professional actors from the Bedouin community in southern Jordan, and is considered a "Bedouin Western". It has also been described as a coming-of-age film. Theeb is an international co-production from Jordan, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.

Production

Bassel Ghandour wrote the script and shared it with Naji Abu Nowar with the idea to do a short film. Abu Nowar reverted and suggested this be a feature film, and from there the story begins. While preparing to do the film, Ghandour, Abu Nowar, and producer Rupert Lloyd spent a year in the desert living in Shakrieh village with the local community, learning the Bedouin lifestyle.

Abu Nowar initially did not like Jacir, the actor playing Theeb. "He was so shy and quiet, I never considered him, but when you put him on camera, he [turns into] a different person. Immediately it became obvious. And so he was the first person we cast and we never looked back or at anyone else." The funding, although inadequate[opinion], was secured by private sector investors, as well as several institutions; King Abdullah II fund for developme…

Jordan's filming community had been preoccupied with Kathryn Bigelow's terrorism drama Zero Dark Thirty and so filming had to be postponed. The production team filmed in the same area where David Lean shot Lawrence of Arabia in the early 1960s; they had to avoid these locations due to heavy tourist activity.

Among the major difficulties the crew faced during the five-week shoot were sand and heat. In Wadi Rum, they were hit with flash floods, storms, and rain. In Wadi Araba, temperatures routinely surpassed 40 °C. Abu Nowar recalls: "We consistently got stuck in the sand, I can't count the amount of times the Bedouin had to rescue us." During post-production, Lloyd realised that a key sequence in which Theeb climbs out of a desert well would have to…

Due to the film's low budget, producers turned to students at San Francisco's Academy of Art University to help them with the visual effects.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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