In this feature,
Alqadi documents the protests – and her personal odyssey – following the brutal episode of mass sexual assault taking place in Tahrir Square, Cairo on 25 January 2013. The attacks, mostly perpetrated by young men aged 20-30, involved women of any age. Rapists took advantage of the confusion caused by the huge crowd which had gathered on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. When Alqadi becomes pregnant during filming, she starts to re-examine the constructs of her own childhood in Palestine and what it means to be a woman and a mother in the Middle East. She also begins an imaginary conversation with her mother, who died before she could see her one last time.
(The article continues below - Commercial information)
Seyran AteÅ is a singular figure: a human rights lawyer, founder and imam of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque in Berlin, where men and women pray together, headscarves are not mandatory and members of the LGBTQ community are welcome. She has been under police protection since 2006, and the film opens with her reading out some of the hundreds of threats she receives both from Muslim fundamentalists and European right-wingers.
In the biographical part of the film, AteÅ, lying on the grass in the sun, relates how she grew up in a poor family in Istanbul and arrived in Germany when she was six. When she got to her teenage years, the contrast between her patriarchal parentsâ treatment of her and her brothers, and the way German girls were free to go wherever they wanted while she was called a whore for wanting to go out, is what inspired her to pursue the path that led her to where she is today. Her mother and sister also ap
(The article continues below - Commercial information)
Seyran AteÅ is a singular figure: a human rights lawyer, founder and imam of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque in Berlin, where men and women pray together, headscarves are not mandatory and members of the LGBTQ community are welcome. She has been under police protection since 2006, and the film opens with her reading out some of the hundreds of threats she receives both from Muslim fundamentalists and European right-wingers.
In the biographical part of the film, AteÅ, lying on the grass in the sun, relates how she grew up in a poor family in Istanbul and arrived in Germany when she was six. When she got to her teenage years, the contrast between her patriarchal parentsâ treatment of her and her brothers, and the way German girls were free to go wherever they wanted while she was called a whore for wanting to go out, is what inspired her to pursue the path that led her to where she is today. Her mother and sister also ap
03/03/2021 - BERLINALE 2021: Palestinian filmmaker Samaher Alqadi’s debut feature documents the protests following the string of severe sexual assaults that took place in Tahrir Square in 2013