Shattered mirrors. Blurred reality. Rules rewritten. This program presents a collection of films that put women in control—claiming space, voice, and story while confronting the past to challenge the present. Celebrating International Women’s Day, these works celebrate the power of the female lens to break gender norms, shift identities, and redefine what it means to be seen on the stage, the screen, and the streets.

The journey begins with the multi-award-winning 7Hours, shot on an iPhone to explore how time zones strain a long-distance relationship, followed by the Berlinale-screened Have You Ever Killed a Bear – Or Becoming Jamila, which uses archival magazines to trace the fleeting visibility of Algerian freedom fighter Jamila Bouhired. The program travels through the animated journey of an Egyptian woman reconnecting with her roots in Molokhiya, and the quiet subversion of public space in Shorouk Fei Ez El Dohr, a portrait of a female produce seller and trike driver. Themes of survival and identity emerge in the story of 12-year-old Nesma, who constructs a fragile illusion to maintain stability, and in Crack, where a 16-year-old’s impulsive act under pressure alters her self-perception. The act of witnessing itself is interrogated in A Moratorium on Looking, which reflects on the Mediterranean as both a postcard and a graveyard, while Samra's Dollhouse turns film authorship into a battleground when a director’s "perfect" male lead blurs the line between fiction and reality. Finally, Cairo, I Hate You, I Love You captures the resilient pulse of female friendship as a simple picnic spirals into urban chaos.

Through these diverse lenses, the program captures a collective reclamation of the narrative. By moving from the intimate confines of a dollhouse to the restless pulse of Cairo’s streets, these stories prove that when women claim the frame, they don't just tell a story—they rewrite the rules of the world we see.

Q&A with Director Farah Alhashem

The screening will be followed by a film talk with director Farah Alhashem, who will share her personal experiences and discuss the evolving landscape for women in the film industry. Farah is an award-winning Kuwaiti-Lebanese filmmaker and journalist based in Paris. She has been making films since 2011 including 7Hours, which won several awards at film festivals in 2013 and Breakfast in Beirut in 2015, which was honored at multiple festivals.