AS I WANT
Samaher Alqadi | Egypt, France, Norway, Palestine, Germany 2021 | 78 Min.| OmeU
17.05. | 9pm
De France, Saal 1 | TICKETS
Cairo, January 25, 2013: Countless sexual assaults take place on Tahrir Square during demonstrations that commemorate the second anniversary of the revolution. In response, enraged women from all over Kairo fill the streets and begin to fight back. Samaher Alqadi is also angry and no longer wants to accept the current state of affairs. With a camera in hand, she resists and accompanies the growing rebellion. But when she becomes pregnant, she begins to put into question not only female attributions in the Middle East, but also the experiences of her own childhood in Palestine.
AS I WANT uses observational shots, re-enacted experiences, and black-and-white reflections to document the past ten years of the women’s movement in Cairo, interwoven with Alqadi’s own family history.
Direktor: Samaher Alqadi
Production: Karim El Hakim
Co-production: Nefise Özkal Lorentzen & Jørgen Lorentzen (Integral Film, Norway), Serge Gordey (Temps Noir, France), Mohanad Yaqubi (Idioms Film, Palestine), Thomas Kaske (Kaske Film, Germany)
Camera: Samaher Alqadi, Karim El Hakim
Edit: Gladys Joujou
Music: Naissam Jalal
Sales: Filmotor (Michaela Cajkova, Prague)
AWARDS
FIPRESCI Prize – Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival / Ankara, Turkey
Best Film – SANFIC (Santiago International Film Festival) / Santiago, Chile
Best Documentary – Der Neue Heimat Film / Freistadt, Austria
Grand Prix Contrébandes – Bordeaux International Independent Film Festival / Bordeaux, France
Bronze Tanit – Carthage Film Festival (JCC 2021) / Tunis, Tunisia
Lena Ben Mhenni Human Rights Award – Carthage Film Festival / Tunis, Tunisia
Best Documentary – Salé International Women’s Film Festival / Salé, Morocco
Audience Award – Popoli Film Festival / Florence, Italy
Special Mention
Human Rights Film Festival Ad Hoc: Inconvenient Films, Lithuania
Documenter, Indonesia
Karama Human Rights Film Festival, Jordan
BIOGRAPHY
The Palestinian filmmaker Samaher Alqadi was born as one of nine children and grew up in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah. 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.
