Creations

Emna Mrabet is a lecturer in the cinema department of Paris 8 University, where her teaching focuses on the aesthetics of cinema, documentary production, and film analysis. The emphasis of her research is on the question of identity among filmmakers with a background of immigration from North Africa, particularly in the films of Tunisian female directors. Together with Ons Kammoun, professor and researcher in cinema in Tunis, she is currently organizing a conference in Tunis on June 13-14 on “Gender and emancipation in Arab cinema.”

Despite its popular and… anti-fascist origins, the high mass of international cinema which is the Cannes Film Festival has become utterly inaccessible. This is what around ten young women from the region confided to our journalist. On the other side of the barricades, these women from the Côte d'Azur struggle to find their place in their own city, faced with the people “from above”: the “others,” the movie stars, models, actresses, influencers. A Medfeminiswiya report.

Women and women’s resilience were at the forefront of the fourth edition of the Annaba Mediterranean Film Festival, which made a sensational comeback after several years of absence. A Medfeminiswiya report.

The show Bab Rezek (Doors of Livelihood), broadcast on Tunisia’s El Watania 1 television channel, is one of this year’s soap operas that addresses the suffering of Tunisian women working in agriculture and fields.

“Hello to the newlyweds, we’ve brought you sweets on a tray. Tell us, how did that first night go? Show us the proof of honor.” It is with this sentence that a mother congratulates her daughter on her marriage in front of the family and the whole village, demanding proof of the bride’s “honor”..

Egyptian soap operas offered us a hefty meal of major and recurring women’s issues this year, ranging from surrogacy to the same old marital infidelities. The shows treat these issues that revolve around women’s lives and rights in sometimes clever, sometimes unjust ways.

The series Fallujah, Part Two of which was broadcast on Tunisian channel Elhiwar Ettounsi, answers outstanding questions from Part One such as the outcome of the case of the rape of the minor student Rahma.

The series Wlad Badia (Badia’s Sons) is the talk of the town this month of Ramadan. The song Fahat Rihat al-Baroud (The Smell of Gunpowder), which plays during multiple scenes, has gone viral, and two of Sukkar’s iconic lines - “it’s not my business,” “I don’t care” - can now be heard randomly on the street and in restaurants.

The image of the Algerian woman in Ramadan productions has this year been reduced to the “legendary slap” an actress received, a narrative reinforced by the harassment several women on the street endured from the hidden camera crew.

Since the first episodes of the series Wlad Badia (Badia’s Sons) started airing, female roles emerged clear and strong, breaking away from the stereotypical portrayal of women.