10 years Arab Spring: Bar Bahar

The film Bar Bahar and the conversation with Nisma Alaklouk and Lara Khaldi will be available on Picl from Wednesday 21 January onwards.

Last December it was exactly 10 years ago since the beginning of Arab Spring. During these protests women played an important role, thereby breaking with the traditional patriarchy. That’s why we screen two films on Picl which focus on the personal experience of these women fighting for change. This time: the Israeli film Bar Bahar.

Three Palestinian women share an apartment in Tel Aviv. Lawyer Laila (Hawa) is a party animal, DJ Salma (Jammelieh) is a closeted lesbian, and Nour (Kanboura) a devout Muslim woman with a somewhat naive view of the world. A sparkling portrait of free spirits who like to escape into the city’s wild nightlife.

Bar Bahar, the first feature film of Maysaloun Hamoud, received critical acclaim from the festival circuit. But the filmmaker also received death threats from conservative Muslims, and even a fatwa.
After the film, we talk with writer Nisma Alaklouk and curator and critic Lara Khaldi about the position of Palestinian women in their work and especially in film. Have their lives truly changed since the Arab Spring?

Speakers

Nisma Alaklouk (1986) is a writer from Palestine. She published several novels in Arabic before moving to Brussels in 2013. Brussels Women appeared in 2019, about the life in the Belgian city of four women with different (traditional) backgrounds.

Lara Khaldi is an independent cultural critic and curator, living in Jerusalem. She is an alumni of the Appel Curatorial Program, Amsterdam, and the European Graduate School, Switzerland. Until recently, she was Head of Media Studies at Bard Al Quds College in Jerusalem. She is currently a member of the artistic team of the fifteenth edition of the prestigious art exhibition Documenta.