In the Shadow of a Man

Wafaa, Suzanne, Shahinda, Badreya are four women from different backgrounds who belong to different generations. They are connected by the current changes in Egypt before and after the revolution as well as their quest for self-determination. This film interweaves their stories and images from their everyday lives into a powerful, intimate and politically explosive portrait in which the 'little' things that inform the lives of these four women – their thoughts, their experience of marriage and their wedding night, divorce, family, violence, abuse, work and migration – come together to form an impressive social portrait. Theirs is a bid for power sharing, but gender emancipation will never be achieved in isolation, as the documentary's young director Hanan Abdalla says, without the social and political changes that Egypt is currently fighting for. Abdalla comes from a family of Egyptian activists; her father left Egypt in the seventies, finally settling in the UK where she was born. When the revolution began she moved to Cairo, where she now continues to participate in the struggle and follow events with her camera. (Berlinale)