Nadim Sawalha is Abu Raed. The veteran London-based Jordanian actor imbues his role as an airport cleaner – mistaken for a pilot by a gang of local boys – with such depth and dignity that he takes this unabashedly populist tale to an unexpected level of complexity. But Sawalha has some stiff competition: the motley crew of Amman street kids, first-time actors cast from local refugee camps and orphanages, underplay their roles with untutored flair.

And then there’s Amman itself, jostling for the limelight as it finds itself the setting of the first Jordanian feature for fifty years. Writer-director Amin Matalqa, returning to Amman after many years in the US, and his DoP Reinhart Peschke, lovingly lens the dense downtown sprawl in an affectionate, amber hue.

Coaxed into playing the role of the neighbourhood Captain, at first Abu Raed is lifted from the lonesome, humdrum routine that he shares with the memory of his late wife, and the kids initially revel in his stories of foreign lands; his rapport with troubled older boy Murad (Hussein Al-Sous) eventually transforms him. Through a love of books shared on the airport bus, Abu Raed befriends Nour (television host Rana Sultan, in her first acting role), a real pilot under pressure from her wealthy family to get married before she hits her mid-thirties.

With its lush score by Austin Wintory, and sweeping narrative, Captain Abu Raed makes no secret of its emotive aims. But the nuanced performances and an acutely observed script that gives ancillary characters – including Abu Raed’s janitor apprentice, and a poker-faced taxi driver – moments of deadpan humour bring the film on to the right side of sentimental.

Destined to be the break out Arab hit of 2008, Captain Abu Raed won the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic at Sundance, and Sawalha took the Best Actor award at the Dubai International Film Festival.