26 minutes / Color
Arabic / English subtitles
Release: 2001
Copyright: 2001
This film is devoted to one extraordinary Moroccan woman's story. In it she confronts her family and their servants about the relationships between them, and what these relationships may reveal about Moroccan society, and her own life.
Yto was raised in a liberal bourgeois Moroccan family. They saw nothing wrong with expressing left-wing views at the dinner table while being waited on by servants, cooks and maids. This contradiction troubled Yto as she became older. The narrative spine of the films becomes Yto's search for one of the maids who declared her independence to marry and left the family home.
"[ARAB DIARIES] presents a rare critical insight into contemporary life in the Arab world. The quality of sound and cinematography of this series is superb. The films contain a rich source of information on a culture that is often guarded from the west. It dares to bring up strong issues without imposing judgment on the values discussed. The series is a good example of how much more we have to learn about the Middle East - the films managed to raise an eyebrow once or twice, even though I spent almost 20 years in that region. Highly recommended to all kinds of libraries, especially academic libraries with undergraduate studies related to culture, anthropology, or Middle Eastern studies, as well as libraries with internship programs in the Middle East."—Educational Media Reviews Online
Select Accolades
A five-part documentary series that presents a fresh, insightful picture of contemporary life across the Arab world.
Various | 2001 | 130 minutes | Color | Arabic | English subtitles
Explores the hopes and aspirations of Arab men and women as embodied in the dreams and realities of flying.
Ghalia Sheikh, Lubna Haddad, Abbas Hashim, and Raed Helou | 2001 | 26 minutes | Color | Arabic | English subtitles
Documentary portrait of a housemaid agency in Beirut, Lebanon.
Maher Abi Samra | 2016 | 67 minutes | Color | English; Arabic | English subtitles
