Director in Person (tentative)Drawing on the Arab heritage of oral tradition and the mosaic-like storytelling of The Arabian Nights, Leila and the Wolves is an exploration of the collective memory of Arab women and their hidden role in the recent history of Palestine and Lebanon. Dissatisfied with the official colonial, male-dominated version of history, Leila travels through time to unearth a forgotten layer of human history. Her journey starts in Palestine under British mandate in the 1920s and finishes with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. En route she witnesses the 1920s uprisings in Palestine; the revolution of 1936 to 1939, where she sees women smuggling arms under the cover of a wedding; and the massacre of the Palestinian village of Deir-Yassin. The film was shot on location in Syria and Lebanon, often under extremely dangerous conditions. It won several international prizes, including the Grand Prix at the Mannheim Film Festival and Best Scenario in Paris.-Tarek Elhaik