The body is a work of art, a vessel for the soul, a ground for debate, a battlefield and a gem that needs to be appreciated.

STILETTO: A PINK FAMILY TRAGEDY
by Can Merdan Doğan, Turkey 2021, 18', Turkish with english subtitles
Hasan is a taxi driver working the night shift. On the early-morning drive home, he sees a woman in high heels passing by. Fascinated by her appearance, he does something that leads to disaster in a world where the boundaries of masculinity are clearly drawn.

AL ATLAL (THE RUINS)
by Raed Rafei, Lebanon, USA 2021, 16' Arabic and English with english subtitles
In a French travel book for the Middle East, a drawing of an ancient bathhouse sparks a visual poem inspired by the Arab poetic tradition of “standing by the ruins.” The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring imperial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, homoeroticism and violence, archives and ruins, histories of sex and of empires – all co-mingle in this essay film.

ATHAAR
by Zara Naber, Lebanon 2021, 5', English
Athaar (‘ruins’ in Arabic) is a story about the identities we create, adopt, and reject as we question the traditional constructs of freedom. The western world has objectified the notion of freedom as its own – today freedom is not Arabic, it’s American, European, Western.

BRO
by Omar Abdo, Iran 2022, 20', Farsi with english subtitles
Mehrad is a 20-year-old guy from upper middle-class Tehran. Despite the social practices of his class, he decides to deal drugs in his underground party community and today, for the first time, he’s going to buy 200 grams of cocaine.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT CAKE
by Omar Abo, Egypt 2021, 5', Arabic with english subtitles
A millennial indulging in present day luxuries gets distracted by glimpses of a past world that now seem alien and long gone. Cake, the third segment from a short film series, showcases the stark presence of a digital reality and the dissolution of a past we millennials once knew.

BLIND DATE
by Mona Khaouli, France 2022, 12', French and Arabic with english subtitles
Awkward 27-year-old May has a blind date with June. All she knows about June is that she will be wearing pink socks for their meeting. On the way there, May’s phone is destroyed in the most absurd of circumstances. Shocked and appalled, May decides to make her way to the date anyway: after all, June shouldn’t be that hard to find. To May’s surprise, the café is teeming with women, only women, all wearing pink socks. Which one of them is June? How will May find her without making an absolute fool of herself?

(Soura Film Festival)