Filmmaker Samaher Alqadi was there herself with her camera in hand to document the women’s own uprising from the frontline. But her pregnancy and the shadows of her childhood in Palestine also made her embark on a journey back to her parents’ home in Ramallah while performing an imaginary inner dialogue with her own mother who had passed away. ‘As I Want’ is a reflective but politically hard-edged film about the often overlooked uprising of women during and after the Arab Spring, and about the fight for liberation that may have only just begun.
The Palestinian filmmaker and screenwriter was born one of nine children and grew up in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. 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 (2021) is her first feature-length documentary.
AWAN 2022 Film Curator, Elise Hassan is a writer, programmer and curator championing women-led Middle Eastern and North African cinema and community-led cinema screenings.
Director: Samaher Alqadi
Producer: Karim El Hakim
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