Maghrebi women first began making films in the late 1960s, roughly a decade after the official birth of cinema in post-colonial Maghreb. The pioneers were the Tunisians Sophie Ferchiou, the first Maghrebi woman to make a documentary with Chéchia (1966), and Selma Baccar, whose L’éveil (1968) was the first short film directed by a woman. The subjects explored in these films relate to the status of women in a country that since gaining independence in 1956 had become noted for its progressive policies in favour of women’s rights. Baccar would also be responsible for the first feature film directed by a Maghrebi woman, Fatma 75 (1975) (Fig. 1).

This was followed by the film La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (1977) by the Algerian writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar, which won the International Critics’ Prize at the Venice Bienniale in 1979. These were the only feature films directed by Maghrebi women in the 1970s, both made possible by state funding.

The national film production boards founded after independence in all three countries (Elena 1999; Gabous 1989) facilitated the creation of the first film essays directed by women. These pioneers formed an artistic

and intellectual elite trained at French and Belgian film schools, whose filmography reflects the influence of the French New Wave and Italian neorealism (Gabous1989).

In the early years of independence, the fledgling Maghrebi film industries directed their attention at supporting the nation-building projects of their respective countries. Various authors, including Rouxel (2016), Callé (2012), Brahimi (2009) and Elena (1999), have pointed out that the early political and social commitment of Maghrebi filmmaking distinguished it definitively from commercial cinema. Described by Brahimi as cinéma d’émergence [emergence cinema], “film production in the Maghreb essentially developed with a critical intent and a powerful expression of disillusionment, or even of discontent” (Brahimi 2009,76). Thus, armed with a critical camera, Maghrebi women filmmakers explored crucial issues such as the conflict between tradition and modernity, marginalisation, social taboos and colonial warfare. The period from the 1970s to the 1990s saw the birth and rise of a women’s film movement with different rhythms and inclinations specific to the context of each country.

The situation of women was the main focus adopted by these directors to explore political and social issues. In her filmKeswa, le fil perdu [Keswa, The Lost Thread] (1997),KalthoumBornaz invites public discussion of the issue of conflicting identities and the dilemma faced by post-colonial societies split between two cultures. One film that would mark a turning point in Tunisian film history is undoubtedly MoufidaTlatli’sLes Silences du Palais [The Silences of the Palace] (1995), which explores the connection between colonial domination and gender oppression in Tunisian society with an exceptional aesthetic sensibility. This concern with social issues can also be found in the films of women directors in Morocco in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly two pioneering filmmakers: Farida Bourquia, who has made several documentaries and one fiction feature film, al-Jamra [The Ember] (1982); and Farida Benlyazid, who has an even more extensive filmography to her credit. Benlyazid’s films Identité de femme (1979), Bab Al-Sama Maftuh [A Door to the Sky] (1989) and KeïdEnsa [Women’s Wiles] (1998) all focus on the emancipation of Moroccan women and the struggle against archaic traditions, but they also display a concern with the intercultural question and “the conflict of identity in Moroccan Muslim women understood as a tension between the French colonial and Arab Muslim cultures” (Torres Calzada 2012, p. 1059).

While female directors in Tunisia and Morocco managed to make their films despite financial difficulties and political authoritarianism, in Algeria very few women apart from Assia Djebar took on the challenge of filmmaking. Since 1962, the Algerian film sector has been controlled by the government agency known as the Office national pour le commerce et l’industriecinématographique, whose purpose is to produce films that promote a nationalist historical and political discourse (Caillé, 2010, p.268). The decade of the Algerian Civil War paralysed the film industry due to the persecution of artists and intellectuals. The only film made by a woman during this time, Les démons de minuit (1993) of Hafsa Zinai Koudil, generated significant controversy and threats from Islamist groups in Algeria. The film was inspired by a real case that occurred in 1990, where a woman was brutally assaulted for refusing to wear the veil, which provoked a violent response from conservative sectors. The filmmaker stated that she made the film ‘in a state of terror’ due to the threats and pressures she faced during the shooting (Bedarida, 1995).

During the 2000s, Maghrebi women’s cinema entered a stage of consolidation. With the Algerian Civil War over, a new era for female directors began in the country. Women took up the camera once again and would begin making films focusing on the terrorism that marked the “Black Decade” of the 1990s. These films highlight the violence that had a particularly traumatic impact on Algerian women. Habiba Djahnine’sLettre à ma soeur [Letter to My Sister] (2006) and Djamila Sahraoui’s Barakat (2006) stir up the painful memories of a tormented populace caught between state-sponsored violence and extremist terror. This distressing view of Algerian society can be found in Yamina Bachir’s film Rachida (2002), which above all underscores the suffering of women who were the targets of assaults and killings. For the filmmaker Amel Blidi, telling the story of the violence is artistically and psychologically necessary to heal the traumas: “We grew up in the 1990s, we lived through this civil war, which was devastating on every level. Algeria wanted to turn the page really quickly, but the consequences are still there. When we want to break the silence, words fail us, so we turn to the language of images. The driving force of this new cinema is fury and hope” (Strauss, 2017).

In Tunisia, the political repression of the dictatorship constrained filmmaking activity, undermining the initial creative boom that had made the country a leader in the Maghreb in terms of film production by women in the 1980s and 1990s. The pioneering directors consolidated their careers with new feature films that were acclaimed at international festivals: La Saison des hommes [The Season of Men] (2000) by MoufidaTlatli, Fleur d’oubli [Flower of Oblivion] (2005) by Salma Baccar and L’autremoitié du ciel [The Other Half of the Sky] (2008) by KalthoumBornaz. Faithful to their favourite themes, their films serve as a visual testimony against the patriarchy. These directors “strive to express the dysfunction of a highly conformist society that is slyly more repressive than it appears at first glance, with often harmful and sometimes fatal results for the individuals who fall outside the norm,” explains Brahimi (2009,p. 11). In Morocco, the creation of the Festival International du Film de Femme de Salé in 2004 gave a boost to the creativity of women filmmakers. However, censorship of political, sexual and religious topics limited their freedom. The new revelations of the decade would be Narjiss Nejjar, who explores the female condition in Les yeux secs [Cry No More] (2003), and Yasmine Kassari and Leïla Kilani, who examine the issue of immigration in l’Enfantendormi [The Sleeping Child] (2005) and Tanger, le rêve des brûleurs [Tangier, the Burner’s Dream] (2002), respectively.

The new context of freedom of expression in the wake of the Arab Spring (2011) has given a new boost to women’s cinema in the region (Forster, 2019). A new generation of women directors began to come into its own, using the camera to tell stories about the turmoil on the streets and the political and social upheaval that has characterised the post-revolutionary period. This new generation grew up in a context in which visual language and the audiovisual market underwent a massive transformation thanks to the development of new technologies. These young filmmakers have introduced changes to the narrative aesthetic, innovations to cinematic language, and new topics that their predecessors were unable to address in the years of the dictatorships, such as politics and religion. However, they have also maintained a clear continuity in terms of themes related to the status of women.

In the first years of the revolutions, young women filmmakers embraced the documentary format, which, according to Rouxel, “is a privileged form of this new cinema, this new exalted word, and the one that has been used the most to translate, archive and document the Revolution” (2016,p. 12). The adoption of this format may likewise be attributed to underlying economic considerations. The difficulty in securing funding for film projects in the Maghreb is more pronounced for female filmmakers, which has led many directors to produce works requiring fewer resources, such as documentaries or short films, which constitute the majority of their output. Motivated by the need to chronicle the events that were unfolding, these filmmakers used their cameras to capture images of historic moments for the construction of a collective memory. In Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, the topics of such documentaries have focused on two main issues: the political revolution and the feminist struggle during the transition (Ghabra, 2018).

The first documentary made in the first year of the Tunisian Revolution, Nadia el Fani’s Laïcité, Inch’Allah! [Neither Allah, Nor Master!] (2011), provoked a media storm by sparking a controversial public debate over secularism. The documentary Ya Man Aach [It Was Better Tomorrow] (2012), Hinde Boujemaa’s first film, charts the events of the revolution through the story of a woman living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood. Other female directors who took an interest in the plight of women during the democratic transition include Sonia Chamkhi, whose documentary Mounadhilat [Militantes] (2012) tells of the mobilisation of female candidates in the elections for Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly. In 2017, the documentary Au-delà de l’ombre [Upon the Shadow] by the young filmmaker Nada Mezni, which deals with homosexuality in Tunisian society, caused a sensation when it won the Tanit de bronze for best documentary at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunis.

In Algeria, the new generation of women filmmakers also turned to the documentary format to chronicle recent events in the country and to continue investigating the memory of the “Black Decade”. The documentary El Fegoun [Fragments] (2018) by Bahia Bencheikh tells of the public protests using real footage and interviews with civic activists. In a similar vein, Katia Kameli reconstructs the history of Algeria in Le Roman algérien[The Algerian Novel] (2019), showing the connection between the social uprisings of 2011 and the more recent protests in 2019, while the filmmaker Meriem Ben Achour explores issues related to the status of women in H’na Barra [On est dehors] (2014). In contrast to the Tunisian and Algerian contexts, Morocco’s authoritarian government continues to repress any form of criticism of the political system. Moroccan documentaries have thus avoided addressing the political events of the last decade, while nevertheless focusing on social issues such as the status of women, in films such as Femme à la caméra [Camera/Woman] (2012) by Karima Zoubir; Mères [Mothers] (2020) by Myriam Bakir and 7sla [The Dead End] (2020) by Sonia Terrab.

In the case of fiction, the handover to the new generation is evident in all the films made in this period. In Tunisia, the main topics of the seven fiction films produced over this time relate to the status of women, violence, youth and taboos in a society in political transition and in search of healing from the aftermath of a long dictatorship. These include Âala Hallet Îni [As I Open My Eyes] (2015) by Leyla Bouzid and Aala kaf îfrit [Beauty and the Dogs] (2017) by Kaouther Ben Hania.

Algerian production in this decade has been less prolific. With five feature films, women filmmakers have adopted innovative perspectives on some of the issues explored by their predecessors, such as the memory of the “Black Decade” in the films Yemma (2012) by Djamila Sahraoui and Papicha (2019) by Mounia Meddour, or violence against women and sexual abuse in Sofia Djama’sMollement, un samedi matin [Limply, One Saturday Morning] (2011).

With ten feature films to their credit in the last decade, Moroccan women filmmakers have been the most productive. The policy of government support and international co-productions have benefited women’s cinema. However, censorship of political topics has left its mark on this filmography, which has been unable to reflect the realities on the street the way Tunisian and Algerian films have. A number of the films made deal with Moroccan history, such as Farida Bourkiya’sZaynab la rose d’Aghmat (2014), or are pure fiction, such asIndigo(2018) bySelmaBargach.

Beyond the particularities of each local context, the new generation of Maghrebian female directors share common traits. All their works are authored by women and have been both written and directed by them. This is attributable to the academic training in cinema they have received both within and outside their countries, as well as their professional experiences in the audiovisual sector () . The difficulty in securing funding for film projects in the Maghreb is more pronounced for female filmmakers, which has led many directors to produce works requiring fewer resources, such as documentaries or short films, which constitute the majority of their output. Despite being over half a century old, cinema in the Maghreb still lacks a fully developed industry and remains dependent on state support and foreign production companies ().

The results of the thematic analysis reveal that issues related to women’s emancipation and the feminist struggle, the body and sexuality, rebellion against tradition, sexual discrimination and gender-based violence are the most common themes in the films included in the study corpus [Table 2 near here].

These topics reflect the concern of these directors with the status of women and their commitment as filmmakers to condemning social, religious and political oppression in their countries.

The evolution of the topics addressed in the films reflects a process of constant renewal throughout the study period [Table 3 near here]. The new topics introduced in each historical stage reflect the maturing process of Maghrebi women’s cinema, as well as the new concerns associated with the sociopolitical context of each period. In this respect, two trends are particularly noteworthy: 1) the existence of a thematic constancy in the filmography of Maghrebi women directors in relation to the “emancipation of women and the feminist struggle” and “the body and sexuality”, to the point of becoming identifying features of this filmography; and 2) the progressive inclusion of different topics that reflect the new concerns of each period, such as the issues of fundamentalism, revolution, and the secular debate. Although the struggle of the LGBTQ community is explored in only one film in the entire study corpus, the documentary that addresses this issue in Tunisia constitutes a milestone in the history of Maghrebi cinema that has broken the silence on one of the region’s biggest social taboos.

A country-based analysis of the frequency of the topics addressed reveals both similarities that highlight the sociological commonalities between these nations and divergences that underscore the specific sociopolitical circumstances of each country [Table 4 near here]. In Tunisia and Morocco, the questions of

the body, sexuality, rebellion against tradition and the feminist struggle are the most frequently addressed topics, while in Algeria the focus has been on gender-based violence, sexual discrimination and the feminist struggle. Among the topics that reflect the specific circumstances of each country, the issue of revolution has been addressed mostly by Tunisian filmmakers, which is perhaps unsurprising given that Tunisia was the birthplace of the Arab Spring. Political and social democratisation has given female directors the freedom to explore issues that were previously forbidden, such as the dictatorship, secularism and sexual diversity. On the other hand, issues related to religious fundamentalism and terrorism have been explored most by Algerian filmmakers who endured the hardships of the “Black Decade” in their country. And the issues of immigration and the plight of single mothers have been explored most by Moroccan directors, who have promoted public debate on two of the biggest concerns in their country in recent years.

In all three films, women occupy a central position both as protagonists and as subjects of the story. In the Tunisian film As I Open my Eyes (fig. 2) the emotional tension between Hayet and her young daughter, Farah, is interwoven with the events unfolding in a country on the brink of political collapse on the eve of the revolution in 2010. This tension between mother and daughter evokes the confrontation between two generations of women who rebel against the political repression in their country in different ways. Between the mother’s stifling protective impulse and the daughter’s reckless rebellion, Bouzid portrays the atmosphere of repression and rigid political control under the dictatorship. The film is thus a story of the political crisis told from the perspective of two women, intertwining two struggles against the patriarchal dictatorship and positing a necessary connection between the democratisation of the country and the emancipation of women.

This dual concern with politics and gender can also be found in the film Papicha, (fig. 3) set in Algeria on the eve of civil war in the early 1990s. The main characters are all women whose stories unfold in the context of the rise of the religious extremism that would lead to an outbreak of terrorism during the country’s “Black Decade”. The film portrays the persecution of women in an atmosphere of terror that began to take root in Algeria at that time. Its protagonist, Nedjma, a young student with a flair for fashion, stands up against the fundamentalists who are harassing women into wearing the chador. After her sister is murdered by a terrorist, a traumatised Nedjma will pursue her dream of organising a fashion show to celebrate the haik, a traditional Algerian garment for women.Thehaik thus becomes a symbol of resistance against the fundamentalist threat and its project to impose the black chador, imported from the Middle East, as the standard dress for Algerian women. In the end, the fashion show is disrupted by a brutal terrorist attack that signals the beginning of Algeria’s tragic “Black Decade”.In the same way that the Tunisian film addresses the memory of the dictatorship, the Algerian film reactivates the memory of the decade of terrorism to tell the wounds that remain open in Algerian society.

The storyline of the Moroccan film Adam (Fig. 4) interrogates the social memory embedded in the female body, while delving into the taboos of female sexuality outside marriage and the plight of single mothers in Morocco. The initial tension characterising the relationship between Abla, a pregnant single woman with nowhere to turn, and Warda, the widowed mother who takes the young woman into her home, ultimately develops into a deep bond of friendship and mutual support. The two women grow closer by talking about their sorrows and their desires. Little by little, they will find emancipation through the liberation of their own bodies from the repression of the traditions in which they feel imprisoned. The widowed mother and the single mother finally reclaim their own bodies when they understand that they must seize the reins of their lives and stand up against societal control. In all three films, women occupy a central place as the subjects who tell the story of their societies, and who fight for recognition and visibility in countries beset by political and social crises.

In A peinej’ouvre les yeux,Leyla Bouzid explores the taboo of politics under the Ben Ali dictatorship. The film portrays an asphyxiated society, reduced to silence by repression. The freedom to address this issue has only existed since the revolution in Tunisia. The director chose a young woman, Farah, to represent the insurgency against the regime. This 18-year-old protagonist not only symbolises the young people who led the Tunisian Revolution but also represents all women who have rebelled against gender politics in a rigid society. Through the character of Farah, the narrative exposes the problem of oppression as a structural issue affecting power relations within the political system as well as gender relations within the family and in society in general. In this sense, the film’s contribution to the debate on political change after the Tunisian Revolution is highly relevant thanks to its feminist perspective. Its storyline presents a fragmented view of the political context precisely to expose the connections between the different micropowers of society and to show how the authoritarian power structure between the government and the governed is effectively reproduced in the relationships between men and women.

Meddour’s Papicha addresses the taboo of religion by transporting us to Algeria in the 1990s, in a story that uses the rise of religious extremism prior to the outbreak of civil war as a backdrop. The film explores a collective trauma that has left indelible scars on the collective memory of Algerian society and especially on Algerian women, who were the prime target of the terrorist groups (fig. 5). With women in all of the main

roles, Papicha stresses the anguish of a whole generation of women, recounting the violence and abuse they suffered. The series of events chart how religious extremism seeped stealthily into the country’s social fabric and began to transform the mentality of its people, their view of life and especially their view of women. In its young protagonist, Nedjma, so full of live and creativity, the film presents the option of resistance against the extremist project.

The taboo of female sexuality is dealt with openly by the Moroccan director Maryam Touzani in her film Adam, which treats the issue of single motherhood with a narrative subtlety that exposes Moroccan society’s rigid attitude towards the taboo of extramarital relations and the plight of single mothers. With just three female characters and a humble house located in the ancient city of Casablanca as a setting, Touzani portrays the utter solitude of the protagonist, Abla, a single pregnant woman who has no choice but to leave her village and her family for the duration of her pregnancy. The film underscores the harsh reality of single mothers and the rejection and social stigma they face. Touzani’s camera captures the looks of disdain cast by both men and women on seeing Abla’s pregnant belly when she is walking in the street, highlighting the spark of hatred in their gazes and the pariah status they impose upon her. The director offers an intimate, sympathetic story free of the social moralising that stigmatises single mothers. The subtlety of her approach invites viewers to break the silence and discuss a taboo that has become a serious social issue in Morocco, a country whose legal system punishes single women for engaging in sexual relations or seeking an abortion. Touzani’s film gives a voice to these marginalised women who are discriminated against and condemned by both the legal system and society. The conflict between maternal desire and societal rejection of motherhood outside wedlock becomes an act of violence perpetrated by society on women’s bodies. It is a violence that the protagonist tries to perpetrate against her own newborn child, first by rejecting him and then by trying to strangle him. With this scene, Touzani hints at the chain of violence created by anti-abortion legislation and laws that criminalise single mothers, who are often forced to kill their own babies in order to resolve the “problem”.

The Tunisian film A peinej’ouvre les yeuxemploys a subversive strategy to explore the taboo of sexuality and women’s bodies. The character of Farah represents the archetype of the free and active young woman: a singer in a protest group, playing concerts and enjoying a nightlife of music, drinking and dancing. She is thus a direct contradiction of the conservative view of what a young woman should be. In Farah, Bouzid offers viewers a character that is transgressive in every sense of the word, as the freedom she has been raised with clashes with the social conservatism and political repression of her country. Farah represents the powerful primal impulse of a freedom that she has quite naturally internalised, a freedom embraced by the new generation of Tunisian women who have claimed control over their own bodies, who are not ashamed of their sex and who assert their right to desire and sexual pleasure. The scene that most clearly conveys this message is that of the first sexual encounter between Farah and her boyfriend, Borhene, which surprises the viewer with the boldness of this young woman with an assertive attitude who playfully undresses her partner to “discover his sex”, as she puts it (Fig. 6). This scene is highly symbolic because it depicts a woman who expresses her desire clearly, with none of the shy and passive attitude traditionally expected of women. It also breaks the taboo on the naked body and on sex, both in Arab society and in Arab cinema in general.

When the camera focuses on the male body from the woman’s point of view, the result is an inversion of the traditional relationship between gaze and image in mainstream cinema, which has established the woman’s body as the object-image of visual pleasure (Mulvey 1988). In this scene, Bouzid subverts cinematic tradition by turning the female protagonist’s gaze on a man’s naked body into an act of authorship that expresses and asserts her right to desire. In this way, the director makes her film a narrative space for the full expression of this archetypal young revolutionary: a woman who is sure of herself, with the strength and will to stand up to political repression and oppressive social traditions.

The thematic structure of Papicha revolves around the social conflict over the bodies of women who seek to turn the haik, the garment traditionally worn by women in Algeria, into the unifying thread of the story and the symbol of resistance against the chador that the Islamic extremist groups want to force women to wear. The film depicts the symbolic and physical violence perpetrated on those women who refuse to submit to the demands of the extremists and cover themselves with the veil. In the case of the film Adam, Touzani presents two models for a woman’s relationship with her body and sexuality. Warda, a widowed mother trapped in the memory of her late husband, has disconnected herself entirely from her body, which is bent down by a profound state of grief symbolised by the coarse dark dresses she wears and the ritual of motherly sacrifice they condemn her to (Fig. 7).

With this motif, the film portrays the reality for thousands of widows who forget about their own bodies, neglecting them until they are reduced to a mere work instrument. It is a message alluding to the traditions that pressure widows into dedicating their lives to caring for their children. This denial of the body reflects Pam Cook’s theory that female desire in women’s cinema is often presented as a kind of symptom of a physical or psychological disease, with the result that “the woman’s body ceases to be an erotic body and instead becomes an enigmatic body, a mystery that has to be investigated and interpreted by means of its symptoms” (Parrondo Coppel 2016, 16). On the other hand, with her pregnancy the character of Abla embodies the unrestrained, transgressive sexuality that has dire consequences for her life. Although the situations of the two women are completely different, their bodies are locked in the same social trap: one held

down by the memory of the past and the traditional expectation of sacrifice, and the other weighed down by a foetus whose right to exist is denied by society. Dispossessed and alienated, the protagonists’ bodies house the traditions, norms and constraints of Moroccan society. The film thus reminds us that the subjugation of the woman is effectuated through the training of her body, in the Foucauldian sense of the term. Breaking this chain involves the ritual of freeing the body by claiming it back. The close friendship between the two protagonists provides them with a mutual support that allows each one to find her path towards liberation through the recovery of her own body.