Leila and the Wolves
Drawing on the Arab heritage of oral tradition and mosaic pattern, ‘Leila and the Wolves’ is an exploration of the collective memory of Arab women and their hidden role in history throughout the past half century of the Middle-East, both in Palestine and in Lebanon. The film is a modern-day fairytale about the suppressed history of Arab people and especially Arab women.
Through the eyes of Leila, a Lebanese student dissatisfied with the official, colonial, male-dominated version of “history” the film reconstructs women's daily unglamorous and silent sacrifices as much a part of history as men's military “heroic” action.
The visual leitmotiv of the film is Arab women sitting immobile under the high sun while half-naked men bathe joyfully on the beach. Gradually, women will start getting impatient, as historic events go by, and they will move towards the water for a dip… but in the Middle-East the dance of death still continues.
– Heiny Srour
Description Source: Cinenova Catalogue (1994). Edited by Kate Norrish. Editorial committee: Elaine Burrows, Liane Harris, Helen de Witt
