LOOKING FOR OUM KULTHUM

LOOKING FOR OUM KULTHUM, 2017
Morocco, France | HDD, Color, 90’ | Arabic, English, German
Director: Shirin Neshat
Cast: Neda Rahmanian, Yasmin Raeis, Mehdi Moinzadeh

This second feature of Shirin Neshat, known for her installations in the art world, is an example of meta-cinema. The film’s protagonist is an originally Iranian exiled director like Neshat who wants to shoot a biopic of Oum Kulthum, known as “The Nightingale of Egypt” and “The Star of the East”, and who is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the world. As the film portrays Kulthum’s significance and reputation as well as her position and the difficulties she has faced as a woman through the eyes of another woman artist, it zigzags between the Egyptian diva in the middle of the 20^th century and the woman filmmaker today, intertwining the events and emotions behind and in front of the camera.