Bedouin drama 'Sand Storm' wins at Sundance

Arabic-language film from Israeli director tells story of women caught between modernity and patriarchy

By Jessica Steinberg

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1 February 2016, 4:28 pm Edit

Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center

An unexpected winner at last week’s Sundance Film Festival was Israeli drama “Sand Storm,” a female-driven drama about a Bedouin family from Elite Zexer, who debuted the film at the annual Utah competition.

Zexer won the grand jury prize in Sundance’s World Cinema dramatic competition for the film, which tells the story of Bedouin women caught between conflicting forces of modernity and patriarchy, reported Variety.

The film will premiere in Europe at the Berlinale’s Panorama Section later this month.

Zexer also has a distribution deal with the German Beta Cinema and won at the Locarno International Festival for “works in progress.”

One of the director’s first works was “Tasnim,” a short film about a 10-year-old Bedouin girl who confronts the conservative mores of her family’s tribe.