On the second day of the fourth Arab-Iberoamerican Women Film Festival (16-20 May) in Cairo, four documentaries were featured.

The day started with Saat El Tahrir Daqat (Liberation time has come) Documentary 62 minutes/Lebanon 1972, directed by Heini Sorour. Except for the rare footage of Arab uprisings in the sixties, the film has little to offer. Featuring the imperialism in Oman through the diaries of the resistance is lost amidst the monotonous narration and the news footage.

Tabaq el Diaba (The Wolves’ Plate) Documentary 30 minutes/Egypt 2009, directed by Mona Iraqi, on the other hand was an intense trip chasing the people who are behind the recycling of medical waste instead of burning it in post- revolution Egypt.

A journalist by trade, the director was focused on the topic rather than the cinematic technique. Often narrating the obvious commentary on how difficult her mission was, her frequent appearances in the film, simply “stole the focus from the events itself,” as one of the audience commented.

Honestly, this genre of “investigative reporting” belongs to television programmes, and it would not be fair to access it on cinematic grounds, for it’s a one woman show, as the director explained.

However, Mona Iraqi’s second film Al Somal, Ard al Arwah Al Sherira (Somalia, the Land of the Evil Spirits) Documentary 30 minutes/Egypt 2010, is quite adventurous.

Iraqi decided to go on a journey alone in search of the Egyptian fishermen kidnapped from Somalia shores. Never the less, this is more of a journalist’s quest to find the truth than a documentary.

The day ended with Isabel Allende, Documentary 60 minutes/Germany 2008, directed by Paula Rodriguez. This film tackles the life of the renowned Chilean writer in a classic documentary style.

However, the director managed to highlight this woman’s immense strength and humility. Exploring such a unique writer’s philosophy of life and death made the film an interesting literary quest. The way the director embedded quotes from her books onto real life events is very clever, especially as most of her novels were inspired by her family’s history.

Arab-Iberoamerican Women Film Festival - Wednesday 17 May 2011 at the Creativity Center, Opera House complex

5 pm: Otro Espacio, Otro Tiempo (Another space, different time) documentary 66 minutes/Spain 2010, directed by Idioma Castellano

The quest of two psychiatrists with five patients on a week’s trip into the heart of Argentina

7 pm: Mamnoa (Forbidden) documentary 67 minutes/Egypt-Spain 2011, directed by Amal Ramsis.

The film depicts the director’s search for forbidden topics and the attempts to explore these in Egypt prior to January 25. Then the revolution happens.