One of the featured films for study in Chapter 6 of Moving Images is the short A Stranger in her Own City by filmmaker Khadija Al-Salami (who, when contacted about using an image from her movie for Moving Images, graciously offered it gratis since it was for an educational publication). This exceptional short documentary portrays Nejmia, a 13-year-old girl in Yemen who does not feel she should wear a veil, as she walks freely about the capital city of Sana’a and interacts with other children, various men who harass her for her choices and behavior, and the imam of the great mosque of Sana’a, who embraces and supports her. The movie is available on issue 3 of the DVD magazine Wholphin. Since making that movie, Al-Salami, who lives in Paris and has received the Légion d’Honneur, has made a number of other documentaries, including Killing Her Is A Ticket To Paradise, about a female journalist who displeases hardline fundamentalists, and The Scream, about women’s roles in the 2011 uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen.
Al-Salami recently won a major award for her feature I Am Nujoom, Age 10 And Divorced, about a Yemeni child bride, which won the top prize at the Dubai International Film Festival, whose jury was headed by American director Lee Daniels. Here is an interview with Al-Salami about this movie and her work as a female filmmaker working in France and the Middle East.
[…] earlier post on mediateacher.net presented the first female Yemeni director, Khadija Al-Salami — She is a Yemeni Filmmaker in France — and her highly educational and eye-opening movies, including A Stranger in Her Own […]