Young Black Stallion

Young Black Stallion is set in Arabia, where a girl named Neera is separated from her father and left to survive alone in the desert. She meets a wild black colt, calls him Shetan, and the two form a bond that helps her find her way back to her family. Once reunited with her father, Neera faces a further challenge: taking part in a dangerous horse race across the desert, with the black stallion as her partner.

The film is a prequel to the story of the Black Stallion, the Walter and Steven Farley novel previously brought to the screen by Carroll Ballard, and it was made for large-format IMAX presentation. It was directed by Simon Wincer, the twelfth of the thirteen features he has directed in chronological order, following Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles and preceding Monte Walsh. Jeanne Rosenberg wrote the screenplay, and Fred Roos and Frank Marshall produced. The cast includes Biana Tamimi as Neera, Richard Romanus as Ben Ishak, Patrick Elias as Aden, Gérard Rudolf as Rhamon, Ali Al Ameri as Mansoor and Andries Rossouw as Kadir.

At under an hour, the film is short even by family-adventure standards. Its ratings are modest and split: on IMDb it sits at 5.4 from around 1,400 votes, while on TMDB it holds 6.6 from about 105 votes. The much smaller TMDB sample is warmer, but neither figure points to a widely embraced film.