Cinema
Leila and the Wolves
ليلى والذئاب
Heiny Srour · 1984
Synopsis
In London, Leila, a young Lebanese woman, is preparing an exhibition on Palestine with her partner, the photographer Rafic, and notices that no woman appears in his images. She then sets off through time and space, from Palestine under the British Mandate to the Lebanese civil war, to challenge the colonial and masculine version of history and bring to light the erased role of Palestinian and Lebanese women. Along the way, she discovers that patriarchy oppresses men too.
Context
The screenplay was written in three weeks in London, in 1979, for a screenplay competition open to French-speaking countries, whose grand prize financed part of the budget. Filming took place in West Beirut and in Syria, in dangerous conditions, and six countries, including France, Sweden and Lebanon, put money into it. The film mixes fiction, archive images and folklore, and borrows from the Thousand and One Nights its way of moving from one time to another. It was restored at the laboratory of the Centre national du cinéma.
Who it is for
In Arabic, subtitled, an hour and a half. Acted scenes, period documentary footage and tale sequences alternate, and the same actors play several roles.
Prizes and reception
Screened for a week in Brooklyn in March 2025, then re-released in France on 7 May 2025 in its restored print.
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