The country of focus at this year’s Cairo International Women’s Film Festival is Switzerland.

Four films from the country will be screened: Dominique Margot’s Looking Like My Mother (2016), Esen Isik’s Kopek (2015), Aya Domenig’s The Day The Sun Fell (2015), and Andrea Staka’s Cure - The Life of Another (2014). Swiss filmmaker Dominique Margot will also give a class on “personal documentary, or how to make the not filmable visible”.

Looking Like My Mother follows the life of filmmaker Margot, who grew up with a mother who suffered from depression and from whom she inherited the illness. The film depicts Margot’s helplessness, anger, and acceptance; the complexity of family relations, and the difficulty of living with such an illness.

Kopek delves into the lives of three people living in Istanbul. Cemo is a ten year-old boy who sells tissues on the street to support his family and struggles to speak to the girl he likes; Hayat is a woman in an unhappy marriage who is unexpectedly contacted by her first love; and Ebru is transgender woman who works as a prostitute and finds herself rejected by the man of her dreams. Esen’s debut feature is a reflection on Turkish society at the beginning of the 21st century.

In The Day The Sun Fell, Swiss-Japanese filmmaker Domenig relives the experiences of her grandfather, a doctor on duty for the Red Cross during 1945 Hiroshima bombing, by following the lives of a doctor and of former nurses who lived through the event.

Cure - The Life of Another, is set in Dubrovnik in 1993, one year after the siege of the city by Serbian troops. The story follows 14-year-old Linda, who moves back to Croatia from Switzerland with her father and meets a girl named Eta with whom she swaps identities.

The festival was launched in 2008, and was the first of its kind in the Arab region. It aims to screen films by women from all over the world.

All films are screened with Arabic subtitles, and screenings are free of charge.

It will run from 4 to 9 March.

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