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Film Synopsis

The Arab Spring brought hope for freedom and change. But the second anniversary of the uprising on 25 January 2011, was marred by a series of sexual assaults on Cairo’s Tahrir square, which in turn led large groups of women to gather in the streets in the following days to protest in anger. Filmmaker Samaher Alqadi was there herself with her camera in hand to document the women’s own uprising from the frontlin. But her pregnancy and the shadows of her childhood in Palestine also made her embark on a journey back to her parents’ home in Ramallah while performing an imaginary inner dialogue with her own mother who had passed away. ‘As I Want’ is a reflective but politically hard-edged film about the often overlooked uprising of women during and after the Arab Spring, and about the fight for liberation that may have only just begun.

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Title: As I want

Length: 78 min

Genre: Documentary

Country of Origin: Egypt, France, Norway, Palestine, Germany

Completion Date: 2021

Director: Samaher Alqadi

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About the Director, Samaher Alqadi

The Palestinian filmmaker and screenwriter was born one of nine children and grew up in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She first worked for the Palestinian Ministry of Culture before being accepted into the Egyptian Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo. An emerging voice in Arabic documentary, her films focus on the evolving status of women and dissident artists in the Middle East. As I Want is her first feature-length documentary.

Filmography:

2008 Mohamed Bakri; short documentary  

2008 Gamalaat; short documentary 

2012 Raja3’een; short documentary 

2021 As I Want; documentary