Features

As the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah approaches its second month, Lebanese men and women continue to grapple with their losses—mourning the dead and rebuilding their lives. Amidst this turmoil, a new struggle has emerged: homes destroyed and livelihoods shattered, placing a fresh burden on Lebanese women as they devise simple, practical solutions to make their homes liveable once more.

During the fall of the Assad regime, Syrian journalist Rahada Abdoush was attending a press conference in Jordan. As soon as the crossing was opened, Abdoush insisted on returning to Syria to celebrate the fall of one of the bloodiest regimes of modern times. She tells us the details of her journey from Jordan to Syria and describes the celebrations she witnessed upon her arrival.

It took less than one hour for an evacuation order from the Israeli army to turn me from a reporter communicating the news into the news itself—a displaced woman with nowhere to go.

Despite political and social challenges, female Tunisian visual artists, actresses, and dancers are transforming the street into a space for creativity and freedom.

After the Israeli war broke out across various parts of Lebanon, forcing large parts of the population to be displaced in search of safer areas, many women launched initiatives to support displaced women and provide them with the necessary solutions and supplies to help them overcome this crisis.

More than one million people have been displaced in Lebanon, having left their homes to seek safety amid the escalation of military tensions and Israeli threats, especially after the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in the heart of Dahye, the southern suburbs of Beirut. This momentous event spread more terror and anxiety among the population given that it came along with tense Israeli threats to continue bombing more targets.

In Syria, many laws rely on physical criteria to determine women's rights, rather than principles of citizenship and human rights. This approach only deepens gender inequality.

It’s the second consecutive season in which the Cannes Film Festival has honored women and their struggles. This high mass of world cinema also seems to be intent on highlighting works lensed with the female gaze, even when they are produced by men.

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.