“We’re meant to be ashamed of the way we laugh”
In her documentary, the young Palestinian filmmaker Samaher al-Qadi gives us a passionate and very personal view of what it means to be an Arab woman. Her film explores the oppression of women and its deep roots in society, but also women’s will to fight against it. By Rene Wildangel
Samaher al-Qadi’s personal journey began in 2003, when she left Palestine to study at the Cairo Higher Institute of Cinema. Ten years later, she started work on her documentary film "As I want". By then, the enthusiastic new beginning heralded by the Egyptian revolution in January 2011 had already been derailed; the Muslim Brotherhood had won the election by a narrow margin and taken power. Hard-won freedoms were being gradually eroded, particularly for women. Serious sexual assaults against women had been on the rise since the start of the protests, and were consistently used as a weapon against the revolutionaries; now they acquired another new quality.