‘The Teacher’ Review: Harsh Lessons in the West Bank

The protagonist of “The Teacher” is at the nexus of several dramas at once.

Basem (Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian who teaches English at a school in the West Bank, is focused on helping a student, Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri), who has just returned from serving a two-year sentence related to a protest. Yacoub’s brother, Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), is another of Basem’s pupils — the brains to Yacoub’s muscle, as Yacoub sees it. Early in the film, Israeli authorities demolish the siblings’ house. Soon after, a violent encounter with settlers leads Basem to encourage the family to seek justice in an Israeli court.

Initially, Basem appears to favor a strategy of nonviolent, high-minded resistance, but he has a complicated history. Details about how his past activism affected his marriage and his son are teased out gradually, as he grows closer with Lisa (Imogen Poots), a British volunteer who works as a counselor at his school. Against this backdrop, Israeli investigators are searching for an Israeli American soldier who is being held hostage in the West Bank, and whose captors hope to trade him for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

This feature debut from the Palestinian British writer-director Farah Nabulsi had its premiere before the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. In some ways, the movie suffers from an understandable impulse to streamline. Nabulsi uses Basem as a single fulcrum that she can pivot around as she highlights elements of an intractably complex geopolitical conflict.

But a teacher-student bonding narrative, a legal procedural, a family tragedy, a romance and a kidnapping thriller are a lot to hang on one character. And while the threads all compel individually, the climax, in which Basem declares his determination to redress a past failure, is decidedly trite.

The Teacher
Not rated. In English, Arabic and Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.