Thieves takes time to build its case. Lovingly remodelling the film sets of the 1924 and 1940 versions of The Thief of Bagdad through the imagined perspectives of Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong and Indian-born American actor Sabu, Williams Gamaker allows these simultaneously exoticised and excluded figures to reclaim and recentre their narratives – refusing a film history built on structural racism to ensure their survival at all costs.