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the biggest discovery of this year’s edition from the Middle East could very well be Sudan, the new Arab cinema on the block making its major international festival debut with two documentaries by first-time filmmakers: Marwa Zein’s Forum contender, Khartoum Offside; and Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Panorama pick, Talking About Trees.

Iran has had a modest presence during the recent past at Berlin – and this year is no different, with only a single feature representing the once powerhouse cinema across all sections. Deviating from the country’s signature social realism, newcomer Suzan Iravanian is attracting buzz for her Forum curio, Leakage, a supernatural mystery about a fifty-something middle-class woman who starts leaking oil from her body after her husband disappears.

Mostafa Derkaoui’s forgotten 1974 classic, About Some Meaningless Event, a docudrama about a group of filmmakers asking passersby in Casablanca about their expectations for Moroccan cinema, only to shift their focus to a resentful worker who accidentally kills his superior.  An investigation of the role of cinema and art in society, this militant effort - which was primarily funded by the sale of paintings of a number of contemporary painters – was banned in Morocco and virtually disappeared, until a negative print was discovered in the Spanish film archive, Filmoteca de Catalunya, in 2016 and subsequently restored.

the Polish government passed a law preventing people from referring to concentration camps in the country as “Polish” camps, or saying anything about Polish collaboration with the Nazis

it’s actually a war about Holocaust memory. At first, the Jews were angry at Dani for the planned monument, and now we’re dealing with the Polish government being angry about the way we tell the story.

A Polish Jewish journalist who was interviewed in the film told me that the government is now trying to prove that most of the Polish people helped the Jews. This is, of course, a lie.

When you go to demonstrate in a Palestinian village in the West Bank, which is literally fighting for its life, you are maybe among 10 Israelis. You ask yourself: “Where is everyone? Why are there only 10 of us?”

In Israel, since I am part of the privileged group in society as a Jewish Ashkenazi man, I don’t experience hardship on a daily basis like Palestinians who live right next to me. I was never asked to cut anything from a film, never asked to compromise, and never silenced.

My Palestinian friends who live in Israel cannot say that about themselves. When the poet Dareen Tatour writes a poem and posts it on Facebook, it can be dangerous. She can get arrested. This is a radical thing that would not happen to me even though I say far more brutal things than she does.

Look what’s happening now with the Shomron Fund. They’re holding a film festival for settlers in the occupied territories. This is part of the process of mind control because they’re saying this is a legitimate part of Israel, and so it’s only natural to have a film festival there. And it’s not just some fringe festival. Israeli filmmakers and film funds are all part of it’s becoming very official.

They don't shy away from the problems women face in everyday life, such as forced marriage, sexual molestation, the lack of female education, and domestic violence - matters this society is not accustomed to discussing openly.

It is hardly surprising that women, who for the first time see their own experiences reflected in the public domain, form a significant part of Kannywood's audience. They also play a considerable role in the industry itself. According to the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria, 75 percent of the Hausa movie actors are female, as is the case for two-thirds of the association's members - from singers and producers to actors and make-up artists.

the Kano-based film industry is providing jobs and business to the city, something that went a long way towards improving public opinion of the profession.

not more than 10 years ago, a moralistic backlash triggered by a sex scandal almost destroyed the local film industry. As is often the case in public fights about morality, the female body was the battleground.

The Censorship Board came into existence before the scandal in 2001, and is a combined initiative of the local film industry and the state government. It was a response to the adoption of Islamic law in Kano a year earlier. Under the law, filmmaking was under threat of being abolished altogether. In order to avoid that, Kannywood voluntarily subjected itself to stricter censorship.

stricter guidelines, such as the banning of married women from acting, while also requiring all women in the industry to have a male guardian who would be legally responsible if their ward broke the rules

The overly zealous KSCB executive lost his moral authority when the police caught him in a compromising situation with a young girl in his car, and Kannywood celebrated when, in 2011, the newly elected governor appointed a new head of the Censorship Board.

He describes the task of the board as "preserving Hausa culture".

"We don't like to see body contact between men and women. No handshaking, let alone kissing," he says. "And no nudity or transparent dresses." The general secretary explains how things such as prostitution, lesbianism and adultery may be portrayed, as long as it is clear to the audience that they are unacceptable. Song and dance are permissible, as long as there is no physical contact between the sexes.

"Filmmakers themselves understand they have a task to educate people and cannot go against society,"

Kannywood movies do transmit empowering messages to a female audience

"It's the masses who watch Kannywood movies, not the elite. The general public is more ready for social change than political and religious leaders."

female producers are rare, let alone female directors

most female producers work with a male assistant to get things done on the ground

by being posited as films that inform, educate and explain what is going on here to audiences over there, these films become central to a pre-existing East-West dynamic—a sphere of knowledge production and image-making that tries to translate the orient to an elsewhere

These are discourses that seek to “save brown women from brown men” or brown liberal men from oppressive brown regimes, or basically to save the Arabs from their Arabness, with all the cultural stereotypes such a term entails.

The problem with these films is that they ignore the interconnectedness of “developed” and “developing” countries, of authoritarianism in the Middle East and liberal democracies in the west, of Islamic fundamentalism and the Cold War, and of metropolitan centers of global capitalism and the dispossession of millions all over the world. The problem gets even more complicated when entitlement and ability to represent becomes unquestioned.

These films portray living stereotypes of actual people, focusing on the elements of their lives that are ‘interesting’ only in so much as they tell us something about clichéd versions of Egypt, Tahrir, Islam, women, art and war, conflict, poverty, dispossession and resistance. These topics are not interesting for those who live in war, conflict, poverty and dispossession, those for whom Tahrir was not a spectacle and resistance is a complicated act. In such a context these issues might be relevant, but they are only interesting somewhere else.

I am skeptical of the act of representation itself, the provision of ready-made, easily translatable narratives about 2011 as if the revolution was a thing, and as if "Arabness" is also a thing. If postmodernism declared the death of the meta-narratives—teleogically oriented, totalizing worldviews that tend to put in a claim for the universal and promise utopian resolutions that are yet to occur—Arab Spring documentaries lie on the opposite side of the spectrum. The conditions of their existence, profitability, visibility and circulation depends first and foremost on their claims to a certain truth about “what really happened” over there. But neither the "Arab Spring" nor the "Arab World" can be explained through the sum of their parts. They are constructed, time and time again, through the very narratives that eclipse alternative imaginaries, historical renditions or analyses by foreclosing the realm of imagination all together.

it wasn't until the TV broadcast that things really blew up

If Egyptian prosecutors can accuse a filmmaker in the United States of "threatening national unity" or "assaulting Islam," crimes that carry the death penalty, surely they can actually arrest the men in Cairo who propagated the video

In presenting the video, the broadcasters explained that they spread offensive speech because the public needed to be informed of in injustice.

Al Nas was using the freedom of speech in the same way it is exercised in other countries, including those in the West. Exposing outrages is a central role of the free media, after all. Informing the public is a vital part of democracy, and will be essential in the Arab world as democracy spreads

Some public questioning of Al Nas has begun, and the TV station is on the defensive. "We did not mean... to harm the national unity," insisted Essam Ramy, the editor of the program, in an interview with NPR. He said the program merely "monitors what happens on the Egyptian street," and that if Al Nas really wanted to incite riots, the station would have played even more of the video than it did

Film producers who were salivating to smear Muslims must have been thrilled when Al Nas became a distributor for their product. If they're going to have a democracy, Egyptians are stuck with free speech -- and also with the responsibility to use it better than Al Nas did this month

there has been pressure for a long time now to block Turkish programmes that often take up prime time slots from both Lebanese and Egyptian producers and filmmakers

Before the recent - and most likely politically motivated if not sponsored - spate of Turkish Ottoman history-based dramas, Turkish television programming was still a major hit in the Arab world

To many Middle Eastern viewers, drawn-out Turkish soap operas combining love affairs, drama and mystery more than just being quality television productions represented hope that it was possible to harmoniously merge east and west without sacrificing local identity

depiction of a lifestyle choice that is not an option in the Gulf

“Producers and TV/film firms have their costs covered before they commence filming via the deals they make with domestic broadcasters,” he said.“Other than that Turkish television has never been more popular. It has a market in eastern Europe, Africa and even Latin America.”

“There are so many dimensions to this ban. Another one is that Bin Salman has also launched a big drive on restoring historical places in the kingdom. But with their own Saudi interpretation," Hayek said."And then you have these Turkish historical-based programmes being beamed into peoples’ homes who are very keen to learn about their past and heritage. They can’t be happy about that”.

The increased repression, coupled with persistent concerns over the government's incapacity to handle the pandemic, and plummeting oil prices that spell disaster for Algeria's economy, are all contributing factors to a tension threatening to boil over onto the streets, pandemic or not. 

"We work in fear," an Algerian filmmaker who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity said. "People aren't only afraid for their safety, but also for their families' safety, as you never know how things can escalate with this Kafkaesque judicial system.

"Algeria is the country where, more than any other in the Middle East, authorities have exploited the pandemic to neutralise active opposition to its rule," Eric Goldstein, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, told MEE.

"President Tebboune took office saying he had heard the Hirak's calls for reform and promised a new constitution. "Instead, he exploited the Covid-19 lockdown to try to put the Hirak genie back in the bottle, while proposing a draft constitution that does little to advance political and civil rights."

Reporters without Borders has ranked Algeria 146 out of 180 countries and territories in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index - five places lower than in 2019. 

Many journalists and activists face campaigns of disparate accusations and slander, and anyone using the internet to voice dissent against the monarchy and ruling elite faces possible prison time. 

Some 16 Moroccans have been arrested on similar charges as Radi since October, including famous rapper Gnawi, YouTubers, as well as several high school students.

Since Morocco's Hirak protest movement erupted in 2016, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights has documented more than 1,000 cases of political detention.

Moroccans continue to advocate under the #FreeKoulchi ("Free everything") campaign for the release of all those imprisoned.

Despite adopting some reforms since 2011, citizens are offered little political power under King Mohammed VI, who this year has entered his third decade heading the kingdom. Like much of North Africa as a whole, unemployment levels are high, political corruption and abuses of police power are widespread, and social services are lacking. 

According to the Arab Barometer,  a central resource for quantitative research on the Middle East, 70 percent of Moroccans aged 18-29 have thought about emigrating, a strongly held sentiment shared by both Algerians and Tunisians, whose migration to Europe has increased significantly this year. 

Last month, a Tunisian woman was sentenced to six months in jail after sharing a Facebook post about the coronavirus written as a Quranic verse. The post mimicked the style of the Quran in reference to Covid-19, encouraging people to wash their hands and observe social distancing.

he consolidation of the prime minister's power in Tunisia, high levels of corruption, security and economic challenges along with political stagnation, are all factors that have helped to scupper Tunisia's democratic consolidation.

Though the best performing out of the Maghreb countries, Tunisia still has much room for improvement when it comes to freedom of expression. Despite the steps taken, journalists still face pressure and intimidation from government officials, and reporters covering the operations of security forces often face harassment or arrest.

In terms of the pandemic, unlike in Morocco and neighbouring Algeria in particular, the majority of Tunisians have expressed trust in their government - with 71.2 percent trusting the government to control the virus, and 84.5 percent trusting it to communicate effectively with the public, according to the Sigma Conseil. 

"The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stress test for authoritarian and democratic governments alike,"

The social, economic, and security effects of the pandemic are likely to divert attention away from needed long-term reforms, the political agency of civil society, and risk the permanence of authoritarianism that mirrors Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, after the worst of the pandemic has gone.  

Originally from the northwestern Kurdistan province, Amini was on a visit with her family to the capital Tehran when she was detained on Tuesday.

In her hometown of Saghez, where her body was laid to rest on Saturday, some residents hurled stones at the governor's office and chanted slogans against the authorities

The day after her funeral, nearly all Iranian press dedicated their front pages to her story on Sunday.

Filmmakers, artists, athletes, and political and religious figures have taken to social media to express their anger against the morality police, both inside and outside the country.

Grand Ayatollah Assadollah Bayat Zanjani, a cleric seen as close to the reformists, denounced what he said was "illegitimate" and "illegal" actions behind "this regrettable incident"."The Koran clearly forbids the use of force" to enforce religious and moral values, he said.

Two-time Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi said that "Mahsa now is more alive than we are" because "we are silent in the face of such boundless cruelty. We are complicit in this crime."

"The hair of our girls is covered with a shroud," several footballers on Iran's national team wrote in a joint story they shared on Instagram.

Only popular resistance from below and the reformists’ electoral victories could curb the hard-liners’ drive for total subjugation of the state, society, and culture.

The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, which Iran helped to quell.

once they took over the presidency in 2021 and the parliament in 2022 through rigged elections—specifically, through the arbitrary vetoing of credible rival candidates—the hard-liners moved to subjugate a defiant people once again. Extending the “morality police” into the streets and institutions to enforce the “proper hijab” has been only one measure—but it was the one that unleashed a nationwide uprising in which women came to occupy a central place.

the culmination of years of steady struggles against a systemic misogyny that the postrevolution regime established

With the emergence of the “people,” a super-collective in which differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and religion temporarily disappear in favor of a greater good, the uprising has assumed a revolutionary character. The abolition of the morality police and the mandatory hijab will no longer suffice. For the first time, a nationwide protest movement has called for a regime change and structural socioeconomic transformation.

Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further and further until finally they fell to the shoulders. Officials felt, time and again, paralyzed by this steady spread of bad-hijabi among millions of women who had to endure daily humiliation and punishment. With the initial jail penalty between ten days and two months, showing inches of hair had ignited decades of daily street battles between defiant women and multiple morality enforcers such as Sarallah (wrath of Allah), Amre beh Ma’ruf va Nahye az Monker (command good and forbid wrong), and EdarehAmaken (management of public places). According to a police report during the crackdown on bad-hijabis in 2013, some 3.6 million women were stopped and humiliated in the streets and issued formal citations. Of these, 180,000 were detained.

This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of protest but of redress, through direct actions.

the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

The thousands of tweets describing why people are protesting point time and again to the longing for a humble normal life denied to them by a regime of clerical and military patriarchs. For these dissenters, the regime appears like a colonial entity—with its alien thinking, feeling, and ruling—that has little to do with the lives and worldviews of the majority.

The feminism of the movement, rather, is antisystem; it challenges the systemic control of everyday life and the women at its core. It is precisely this antisystemic feminism that promises to liberate not only women but also the oppressed men—the marginalized, the minorities, and those who are demeaned and emasculated by their failure to provide for their families due to economic misfortune.

A segment of Muslim women did support the Islamic state, but others fought back. They took to the streets to protest the mandatory hijab, organized collective campaigns, and lobbied “liberal clerics” to secure a women-centered reinterpretation of religious texts. But when the regime extended its repression, women resorted to the “art of presence”—by which I mean the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt, and realized. Simply, women refused to exit public life, not through collective protests but through such ordinary things as pursuing higher education, working outside the home, engaging in the arts, music, and filmmaking, or practicing sports.

At this point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a condition of “dual power” where an organized revolutionary force backed by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”

The disproportionate presence of the young—women and men, university and high school students—in the streets of the uprising has led some to interpret it as the revolt of generation-Z against a regime that is woefully out of touch. But this view overlooks the dissidence of older generations, the parents and families that have raised, if not politicized, these children and mostly share their sentiments. A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising. If the regime allowed peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the streets.

Although some workers have joined the protests through demonstrations and labor strikes, a widespread labor showdown has yet to materialize. This may not be easy, because the neoliberal restructuring of the 2000s has fragmented the working class, undermined workers’ job security (including the oil sector), and diminished much of their collective power. In their place, teachers have emerged as a potentially powerful dissenting force with a good degree of organization and protest experience.

Shopkeepers and bazaar merchants have also joined the opposition. In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them, according to a leaked official report, went on strike in Tehran and 21 provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising. Not surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut down their businesses.

Protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests. Most critical were the Friday prayers, with their fixed times and places, from which the largest rallies and demonstrations originated. But Friday prayer is not part of the current culture of Iran’s Shia Muslims (unlike the Sunni Baluchies). Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan.

During the Green revolt of 2009, the ruling hard-liners banned funerals and prevented families from holding mourning ceremonies for their loved ones

the hard-line parliament passed an emergency bill on 9 October 2022 “adjusting” the salaries of civil servants, including 700,000 pensioners who in late 2017 had turned out in force during a wave of protests. Newly employed teachers were to receive more secure contracts, sugarcane workers their unpaid wages, and poor families a 50 percent increase in the basic-needs subsidy.

beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors, 1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij militia have lost 68 members in the unrest.

The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pause are likely to diminish the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one. We have seen these cycles at least since 2017. What is distinct about this time is that it has set Iranian society on a “revolutionary course,” meaning that a large part of society continues to think, imagine, talk, and act in terms of a different future. Here, people’s judgment about public matters is often shaped by a lingering echo of “revolution” and a brewing belief that “they [the regime] will go.” So, any trouble or crisis—for instance, a water shortage— is considered a failure of the regime, and any show of discontent—say, over delayed wages—a revolutionary act. In such a mindset, the status quo is temporary and change only a matter of time.

There are, of course, local leaders and ad hoc collectives that communicate ideas and coordinate actions in the neighborhoods, workplaces, and universities. Thanks to their horizontal, networked, and fluid character, their operations are less prone to police repression than a conventional movement organization would be. This kind of decentralized networked activism is also more versatile, allows for multiple voices and ideas, and can use digital media to mobilize larger crowds in less time. But networked movements can also suffer from weaker commitment, unruly decisionmaking, and tenuous structure and sustainability. For instance, who will address a wrongdoing, such as violence, committed in the name of the movement? As a result, movements tend to deploy a hybrid structure by linking the decentralized and fluid activism to a central body. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has yet to take up this consideration.

a leadership organization—in the vein of Polish Solidarity, South Africa’s ANC, or Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change—is not just about articulating a strategic vision and coordinating actions. It also signals responsibility, representation, popular trust, and tactical unity.

if the revolutionary movement is unwilling or unable to pick up the power, others will. This, in fact, is the story of most of the Arab Spring uprisings—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, for instance. In these experiences, the protagonists, those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward, remained mostly marginal to the process of critical decisionmaking while the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and custodians of the status quo moved to the center.

Things are unlikely to go back to where they were before the uprising. A paradigm shift has occurred in the Iranian subjectivity, expressed most vividly in the recognition of women as transformative actors and the “woman question” as a strategic focus of struggle.

Those who expect quick results will likely be dispirited. But the country seems to be on a new course.