We Are Not Princesses

We Are Not Princesses

Directed by Bridgette Auger & Itab Azzam
Lebanon, U.K. | 2018 | Documentary
75 minutes | Arabic

“We Are Not Princesses” offers moving profiles of a half-dozen Syrian women refugees in Beirut who come together to tell their stories of love, loss, pain, and hope through the lens of the ancient Greek play “Antigone.”  More a therapeutic exercise than a purely artistic enterprise, the theatrical production helps the women find community and process their trauma. Most of the women — resilient, intelligent, articulate — relate their own stories onscreen. Other participants, however, remain unseen, their histories presented through lovely animation because their husbands would not allow them to appear on camera, which speaks to the many challenges they face: not just their traumatic dislocation but also the sociocultural restrictions on their autonomy.

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