- Three generations of women rebel against patriarchal prohibitions. In this cinematic letter, Swiss-Egyptian film director Nadia Fares pays tribute to her father as she recounts 75 years of women's struggles both in Egypt, her father's country, and in Switzerland, her mother's country, where she grew up. She explores the impact of patriarchal traditions in the East and the West, revealing them as mirror images.
- A letter addressed to a "cool patriarch" is the poetic approach taken by this film, which retraces the history of feminism in Egypt and in Switzerland. Mirror effect, paradox. Three generations of Egyptian women fight for their rights but their progress is often followed by discouraging setbacks and resignation. The history of women's struggles is intertwined with that of the political and social struggles of an entire nation. When President Nasser liberates Egypt from colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s, he also frees women from the harshest constraints imposed on them by the country's patriarchal traditions. Those same years witness the youth and education of Nawal El Saadawi (1931-2021), the renowned feminist intellectual who, through her pen and her activism, lays the theoretical foundations of the struggle against the restrictions placed on women by Egyptian society. Nawal is an intellectual who throws herself into the fray; her insightful and uncompromising arguments tie in closely with women's struggles and their transgressions against patriarchal prohibitions. For her writings and activism, she pays a heavy price: first imprisonment, then exile. In the 1950s and 1960s, Abdelghany Fares decides to pursue his pharmaceutical studies in Switzerland, where he meets a young Swiss woman. The film's director, Nadia Fares, is born of this union. Her mother's choice to marry an Egyptian man in the early 1960s in Switzerland sends a strong dissenting message. Images and testimonies in the film reflect the political and social situation at the time - while Egyptian women have been voting since 1956, Swiss women will have to wait more than a decade to become enfranchised. The family of Nadia's mother conspires to have the young Egyptian father, a foreigner from Africa, expelled from Switzerland. A nice Swiss suitor is quickly found for Nadia's mother - the Swiss version of an arranged marriage. This disgraceful scheme is sealed by a burdensome family secret revealed much later. Nadia and her mother also pay a heavy price for this. Meanwhile, the condition of women in Egypt has regressed and the secular ambitions of Nasser's policies have become a distant memory. The veil and the burqa are back in place along with the genital mutilation of young girls, which, although officially prohibited, remains a deeply rooted custom in the rural areas of the south. What resurgence of Egyptian feminism can we hope for today? The women's movement was dealt a severe blow during the 2011 demonstrations in Cairo. The protesters, at first welcomed by the crowds in Tahrir Square, were then violently suppressed and the wave of optimism crashed. A different kind of feminism is now emerging, one that is direct, buoyant, pragmatic and effective. The young women in the film are finding ways to escape from the "marital career plan" suggested by their families and are instead riding their bicycles across Cairo to distribute meals to the needy and, above all, to connect with the strong women who live in these poor neighborhoods. Is a bicycle an honorable means of transportation for a young woman? The horizon for feminist struggles stretches far beyond that of young bourgeois women in the process of emancipation. Seeking renewed inspiration and answers to their questions, our activists turn to Nawal El Saadawi, a pioneer of Egyptian feminism, for her enlightened views.
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