For decades, the “female gaze” in cinema was framed as a counter-movement — a reaction to a film history largely written by men. But today, that definition seems far too narrow. As revealed in a roundtable at the Doha Film Festival 2025, Arab women filmmakers are no longer positioning themselves against a masculine model; they are shaping an entirely new narrative space, where women reclaim authorship over their stories, their silences, and their cultural inheritances.
The conversation is no longer:
“Who represents women on screen?”
but rather:
“How do women see the world? And how do they turn that vision into cinema?”
A perspective that expands the frame instead of replacing it
For Farah Nabulsi, the British-Palestinian director of The Present, the evolution is unmistakable: the woman is no longer the “subject” of the frame but its “author”.
This subtle shift redefines everything.
The female perspective doesn’t compensate or correct. It deepens.
It brings emotional intelligence shaped by exile, political rupture, cultural tension, and family memory — elements that enrich the cinematic landscape rather than compete with what already exists.
It widens the world.
Annemarie Jacir: on set, everyone shares the same fate
Annemarie Jacir, director of Palestine 36, highlights an overlooked reality: on set, the gender struggle dissolves.
“The fate is the same,” she says.
The lack of funding, the insomnia, the fragility of production — men and women endure them equally.
The paradox emerges when she attends Western festivals, where she is repeatedly boxed into an exotic stereotype:
“How do you make films as an Arab woman?”
A question that reveals less about cinema and more about the assumptions behind it.
She recalls how Western funders once questioned her choice to make a war film — “a subject for men,” apparently.
An irony, considering no Arab funder ever said that.
Here, the female gaze becomes inherently political — not because it confronts men, but because it claims the right to narrate history.
Sudan: a cinema born from ruins
For Sudanese filmmaker Rawia Hag, the struggle begins long before the first shot.
In Sudan, studying cinema is not a simple academic choice; it is an act of defiance against a society where women artists must push through layers of social and political resistance.
Sudanese cinema itself rarely gave space to women.
Now, a new generation insists on carving a place in an industry fractured by war and censorship.
Their work resembles writing with light on a broken wall, searching for hope amid destruction.
Jehan El-Kikhia: filming to reconcile a daughter with her father
In Daddy and Gaddafi, Jehan El-Kikhia delivers one of the most personal narratives.
Her film is not merely a creative endeavor; it is a journey into a family wound — the disappearance of her father, a Libyan dissident.
Her search leads her to men of her father’s generation, as though she were reconstructing his presence through the faces of others.
Cinema becomes a bridge across time, generations, and fractured memories.
Conclusion: When women film, the world gains a new face
What unites these filmmakers is not their gender but their determination to bring forward stories that were long silenced.
Their gaze does not “fix” cinema — it re-humanizes it.
The female gaze is neither a trend nor a slogan.
It is a turning point.
A re-mapping of how humanity tells its own story.
A new architecture of truth and emotion.
