The title character is Basem El-Saleh (Saleh Bakri), a divorced man who teaches in a school on the West Bank where most of his male students have already spent time in Israeli detention centers. Two of those students, Yacoub and Adam, are brothers, with Yacoub a brawny type who doesn’t do well in school and Adam his studious younger brother. They come home one day after school to find that their house is being demolished by the Israelis, who then present them with a bill and threaten to throw them in jail if they can’t pay…  “The Teacher” is charged, angry and incredulous about the injustices and indignities visited upon Palestinians there; it’s an effective polemic that views the situation through a variety of characters from a single perspective. Nabulsi struggles to hold it all together at times, but she hasn’t lost her ability to tell a big story through smaller individual journeys. And while her movie flirts with happier resolutions, it’s not interested in hanging on to false hopes for long. – The Wrap