Leila and the Wolves

(Leila wa al ziap)

BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Cosponsored by the Arab Film and Media Institute

  • Introduction

    Jonathan Mackris, who guest curated this series, is a doctoral student in film and media at UC Berkeley.

A film which questions the gospels of the gun; its images flowing in search of woman’s political and historical identity in the Middle East.

John Akomfrah
featuring

Nabila Zeitouni, Rafiq Ali Ahmed,

With her first feature, The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (1974), Srour became the first female Arab filmmaker to have a film selected for competition in the Cannes Film Festival. Leila and the Wolves, her sole fiction feature, made over a six-year period, expands upon her career-long interest in the contribution of women in the struggle for anti-colonial liberation. Tracing the twin histories of Lebanon and Palestine across the twentieth century through a series of narrative vignettes, Srour centers the sacrifices made by Arab women overlooked in official accounts. In a recent interview, Srour described the film as “an archaeological excavation of the collective memory of women of the Middle East. I wanted to rewrite History from a female and feminist point of view. . . . Leila and the Wolves is a disillusioned film. But I remain faithful to the cause of justice in spite of immense political disappointments.”

Jonathan Mackris
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Heiny Srour
Cinematographer
  • Charlet Recors
  • Curtis Clark
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 90 mins
Source
  • Cinenova Distribution