The Between Women Filmmakers Caravan (BWFC) initiative believes in the concept of the online festival, streaming films and bringing filmmakers together with their audience. Its Carte Blanche programme was launched at the beginning of the year. Every month, a female filmmaker selects a film by another female filmmaker to be screened for a week before a meeting is held with the director on the second Thursday of the month. There are 12 films, in other words, but 24 filmmakers meeting with the audience online.

According to BWFC founder Amal Ramsis, the idea of the network is at the heart of the initiative: “Each director’s choice reveals her cinematic awareness and how she connects with other women’s films. As if we see female directors through the eyes of other female directors.” The programme also implies a great deal of variety, with each filmmaker allowed to choose any woman-made film regardless of nationality, year produced or genre. “Every month, we get to know more about not one but two female directors. The audience gets closer to the worlds of two directors they may not have known much about.”

Nine films have been screened so far:

Saken (2014), a documentary by Palestinian director-actress-writer Sandra Madi was screened in January. The film tells the story of Ibrahim Salameh, a Palestinian freedom fighter who was shot while on duty in Lebanon during the 1980s, leading to his paralysis and ending his career in the resistance. When he crosses paths with Walid, an Egyptian labourer in Jordan, they end up experiencing one of the strongest bonds two human beings could share. Saken premiered at IDFA 2014, and participated in the Bristol Palestinian Film Festival, the Beirut Cinema Days, the Al-Film Arab Film Festival in Berlin, and the FidaDoc Aghadir International Film Festival 2015, where it won the Human Rights Award.

It was selected by the Lebanese filmmaker Eliane Raheb, known for her feature documentaries Sleepless Nights (2012) and Those Who Remain (2016), the latter being a film that took part in over 60 festivals and recently won  the Etoile de la Scam prestigious award. According to Raheb, “Saken is an authentic film where Sandra Madi expressed her individual vision of humanity. It is a unique experiment in which the director questions reality.”

In February Speed Sisters (2015), a feature documentary by Palestinian director-producer Amber Fares, was screened. The film follows the Speed Sisters, the first all-woman car racing team in the Middle East. Grabbing headlines and turning heads at improvised tracks across the West Bank, in Palestine, those five women have sped their way into the heart of the gritty, male-dominated scene. For Amber Fares, the director of the film, “not everybody in Palestine is a Speed Sister, but people like the Speed Sisters definitely exist and they exist in other Arab countries as well.”

Speed Sisters premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2015. It was also screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Melbourne International Film Festival, the Helsinki International Film Festival, the Irish Film Institute Doc Fest where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature, the Adelaide Film Festival where it won the Best Documentary award, and the Vail Film Festival where it won the Best Documentary award.

According to Palestinian filmmaker Ula Tabari, who chose Speed Sisters, “it is among the most powerful, recent, Palestinian documentary films. It is a counterattack against stereotypes, treated with a clear vision of Palestine, of women and of women under occupation. While this film presents the world with a different, unknown Palestinian reality, it also unveils unknown practices to the local Palestinian public and generates discussions of gender, power and patriotism.”

Filmed over five years, Freedom Fields (2018) by the Libyan director Naziha Arebi follows three women and their football team in post-revolutionary Libya, as the country descends into Civil War and the utopian hopes of the Arab Spring begin to fade. Through the eyes of these accidental activists, we see the reality of a country in transition, where personal stories of love and aspiration collide with gistory.

Arebi says: “Initially I thought I was making a film about a group of women fighting to play their first ever match as Libya’s national woman’s football team, but it became something far richer, more intimate and more powerful. I was drawn by how, when we lose everything over and over, we find the strength to keep bouncing back and reinvent ourselves, even in a country as chaotic and complex as Libya.”

The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it won the Best Film award at the Joburg International Film Festival, the Best Documentary award at the Karama Human Rights Film Festival, the Audience Award at Salina Doc Fest and the Bronze Horse at the Stockholm International Film Festival.

According to Elhum Shakerifar, the BAFTA-nominated producer, curator and writer who selected Freedom Fields for March, “the film charts six years of Libya’s nascent national woman’s football – a complex journey, to say the least. Beautifully shot, subtly told, by turns moving, infuriating and exhilarating, this is a celebration of an incredible group of women that you simply must meet. If you have no knowledge of what the complex post-Gaddafi situation in Libya looks like, then this film will be a great place to start.”

April’s film was Underground (2020) a fiction feature by the Quebec filmmaker Sophie Dupuis, follows Maxime, a Val-d’Or native in his early twenties, who works in an underground mine near his hometown. He’s on a 14 days on, 14 days off schedule. He shares his life between his girlfriend with whom he’s patiently trying to father a child, and his childhood friend Julien, disabled following a car accident caused by Maxime a year before. Since then, guilt has been eating slowly at Mazime as he seeks to redeem himself, only to find Mario, Julien’s father, on his path, slowing down the process. One night, there is an explosion underground. Maxime heads underground that night with the firm intention of bringing all his colleagues back alive. Through the daily life of these miners, Underground puts forward the contrast between the harshness of the setting of underground mines and the humanity of those who work in them.

Sophie Dupuism, the director of the film, is known for her impactful and disturbing style of storytelling. The intense and unsettling stories she writes are driven by human complexity. Her characters are both dazzling and tender. Her first feature film, Family First (2018), received eight nominations at the Québec Cinéma Awards and four nominations at the Canadian Screen Awards, and it was selected to represent Canada in the race for the Oscars 2018. Underground is her second feature film.

Hinde Boujemaa, the Tunisian director-screenwriter who selected Underground, says that for her what is unique about this film is “the way the director, a woman, looks at this man’s world. She knew how to reveal the sensitivity of a particular world of the male miners.”

Becoming Who I Was (2016), a Korean documentary feature co-directed by Jin Jeon and Chang-Yong Moon, tells the story of a Ladakhi boy of noble birth who, cast out of his monastery and displaced in his present incarnation, must go in search of his past life in Tibet, aided by his ageing godfather’s sacrifice. Eight years of filming capture an unparalleled story of unconditional love in the barren land of Ladakh, between a young Chosen One and his ageing teacher, starting when the six-year-old is enthroned as a noble reincarnate.    

The film won 30 awards including the Grand Prix for Best Feature Film of Berlin International Film Festival, the Top 20 Audience Picks of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, the Audience Award and a Special Mention at the Trento Film Festival.

Filmmaker and video artist Dominque Margot, who selected it for May, says that, “with its quiet, heartwarming narration and beautiful images of the mountains of northern India, this impressive documentary also becomes an extraordinary experience for the viewer.”

Simple As Water (2021) is the feature documentary by Academy Award winner Megan Mylan that was screened in June. The film is epic in scope, but feels intimate. It is a masterful look at the impact of war, separation and displacement, as it takes us into several Syrian families’ quest for normalcy through the whirlwind of obstacles to building life anew. Filming in Turkey, Greece, Germany, Syria and the US, Mylan’s sensitive camera reifies the universal importance of family.

The Danish film producer Sara Stockmann, who selected Simple As Water, is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science and, from 2013 to 2021, the chairwoman of the Documentary Council at the Danish Film Institute appointed by the Danish Minister of Culture.    

The July selection — made by Franca González, who was honoured by the Konex 2021 as one of the five best Argentinian documentary filmmakers of the last decade and whose work is recognised by the Academy of Film Arts and Sciences in Argentina – is Near and Dear (2021) by González’s compatriot by María Álvarez. Ir is yet another feature documentary, the third part of a trilogy on the passage of time and art.

In a small apartment in Buenos Aires, crammed with memories and dominated by a huge grand piano, the Cavallini twin sisters, 91 years old, live out a love-hate relationship with their peculiar symbiotic bond. When they reminisce about their days as a professional piano duo their eyes light up, then the music returns with all the strength of the past.

María Álvarez’s films have been screened at international festivals such as IDFA, Semaine de la Critique Locarno, Thessaloniki, Göteborg, DocAviv, Mar del Plata, Cartagena, Gijón, DocLisboa, BAFICI, Femcine, Havana, Sydney, among others, winning several awards.

In the Claws of a Century Wanting (2017) by Jewel Maranan is a Filipino feature documentary about four families living inside Manila’s busiest international port. While they hear and see the wealth of different nations as people come and go, the airport suddenly expands and panic sets in. This is a cinematic symphony about the increasing violence that comes with the ambitions of globalisation. It captures a global process from the perspective of the everyday. It was selected as the August screening by the award-winning Filipino director-producer Marie-Clémence Andriamonta Paes.

The present month’s entry is Moroccan filmmaker Leila Kilani’s debut On the Edge (2011), a fictional feature about four Tangiers young women working so hard during the day that they can only live at night. Badia, Imane, Asma and Nawal work at textiles and shrimp-processing factories, and are obsessed with movement, crossing the city ceaselessly for as long as they can.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 2011, and it won the Special Jury Award for its four stars Nouzha Akel, Mouna Bahmad, Sara Bitioui and Soufia Issami for their “impressively authentic performances” at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, the best actress award and a special jury award at the Brussels International Independent Film Festival. It was selected by the renowned Egyptian-German filmmaker, curator and film scholar Viola Shafik.  

BWFC is an independent initiative that started in Egypt in 2008, run by a group of female filmmakers. Through mobile and online film screenings of the work of women around the world, it seeks to support the role of women in the film industry, and create an international network of female filmmakers centred on the Arab world. BWFC is also active in the field of film education and training women in creative documentary filmmaking techniques including directing, producing, editing and filming, as well as supporting women’s film projects at any stage of production.

 

*A version of this article appears in print in the 8 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.