The 'Theeb' director describes the film's arduous journey to a foreign-language film Oscar nomination

In the Oscar-nominated Jordanian film "Theeb," the eponymous character, a young boy still untutored in the ways of the desert, is stranded in a particularly hostile corner of the Ottoman Empire circa 1916.

The region around Theeb is in the throes of what was known as the Arab Revolt, a period of...