Shooting star to Arab Film Days
Thirty-four-year-old British-Jordanian Naji Abu Nowar is referred to as the new shooting star in the Arab film heaven. Film magazine Variety appointed him Arab filmmaker of the year in 2014. His debut film Theeb, which opens the festival this year, won best director in Venice and has been the year's big talking point at several of the world's most prestigious film festivals. Next week he arrives in Oslo at the Arab Film Days to talk about Theeb.
Director Abu Nowar and his film crew spent a whole year in the Jordanian Wadi Rum desert to learn everything about Bedouin culture before they started filming Theeb. Here live some of the last nomadic tribes in the region which, together with Abu Nowar entered into a partnership with the desire for mutual respect and authentic representation. The characters in the film is largely played by ordinary Bedouins, not actors, and many were illiterate. The director wanted to portray Bedouin extreme hospitality in a genuine way.
Naji Abu Nowar grew up in Jordan, where he studied scriptwriting. He got brilliant critique for the short film The Boxer (2009), and said in an interview with Arab News that he was inspired by films like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Once Upon a Time in America", in addition to Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro.
Theeb means wolf in Arabic and is an important animal in the Bedouin culture. The wolf is an ambiguous creature, both revered and feared, friend and foe. Whoever gets the nickname "wolf" is expected to develop an incredible strength of character and achieve impossible deeds if he braves the ordeal; to overcome a relentless difficulty.
Hospitality is central in Bedouin culture, if a stranger comes to the tent requesting refuge you must give him protection until the conflict is peacefully resolved. Survival in the desert, where water and food are scarce and the conditions harsh, makes one dependent on strangers benevolence. In the Wadi Rum desert, where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed, the film crew consistently got stuck in the sand, had to evacuate from sandstorms, rain and floods and were repeatedly rescued by Bedouins.
- Behind the scenes the team joked that they were filming the sequel to "Lost in La Mancha".
Bedouins have a beautiful tradition of poetry and oral storytelling that the director immersed himself in. He got well acquainted with the tribal poet, Mdallah Al-Manajah who composed a powerful poem for Theeb in the form of an ode about life, with the Red Sea as metaphor, that we hear in the opening scene.
- I always loved the similarities between desert life and sea life and this was an important aspect of my directorial approach to the film, Abu Nowar says
The film and reality have many similarities, both show something about modernization and culture change. In the village Shakiriya where they stayed, the elders knew how to ride, track, hunt and find water, the youth were mostly ignorant of these skills, reliant on four-wheel drives, roads and modern plumbing.
- They grew passionate about our project because they saw it as a way of preserving their culture.
“Never work with children and animals”
Abu Nowar is quite familiar with this saying, and did indeed encounter problems undertaking such an ambitious project. Theebs donkey ran away three times in search of a female to mate with and would slip at every opportunity. There was enough material for a good blooper reel with run away donkeys, singing goats, and flatulent camels.
After the screening on Thursday 16 April and Friday 17 April we invite the audience to a conversation between director Naji Abu Nowar and film critic in Variety, Jay Weissberg.
