Hidden faces

A fascinating documentary about Egyptian women’s lives in contemporary Muslim society and the effects of Islam on their lives. An Egyptian woman, Saafa Fathay, working as a researcher, and now living in Paris, has been commissioned to work as an interviewer on a film. She goes back to her country to meet the internationally celebrated feminist writer, Nawal el Sadawi, whom she has always admired. Rather than do a conventional portrait of the famous writer as another film crew are doing, and knowing the terrain intimately, she uses Nawal’s writings as a springboard to examining her own upbringing and the lives of her sisters and cousins. In Arabic and English with English subtitles.