DÉBAT ADDOC / FEMMES CINÉASTES DES RÉVOLUTIONS ARABES

Amid the upheavals across the Arab world, women filmmakers are emerging with images of struggles for freedom and democracy, resistance against dictators and the wounds that civil war will leave forever in a child’s memory. Written with a preference for obliqueness and allusion rather than a frontal approach, their films portray countries where terror and power struggles are the norm. They reveal taboos, challenge the frontiers between private and public spheres, brave the censors and take risks to ensure that their films are able to exist. Whether their exile is temporary or lasting, the land of their origins haunts them and remains an inner territory for their creativity. Fatma Cherif (Tunisia), Jihane Chouaib (Lebanon) and Hala Mohammad (Syria), each with a singular voice, question the intimate, politics, identity, belonging to a culture.