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nataliey
Heiny Srour's 1984 film, Leila and the Wolves, functions as a radical act of historical reclamation and feminist critique. It is a refutation of patriarchal erasure, first captured when Leila’s partner, Rafik, asserts that women "had nothing to do with politics" in the past. Through her subconscious journey, observing women from the 1920s through the 1970s, the film documents 50 years of Palestinian and Lebanese struggles. Srour recreates the overlooked contributions of women as fighters, nurturers, and strategists, to the broader revolutionary movement.
The film critiques both external oppression and internalized patriarchy. While British, Israeli, and other external oppressors treat the Arab women terribly, they are no freer among their husbands and fathers. This condition illustrates our course concept of precarity, highlighting the vulnerability women face across intersecting regimes of power. Women are shown experiencing patriarchal oppression through domestic violence (a woman being beaten by her husband), societal discipline (older women scolding daughters for not being married or having enough children), and economic insecurity (a divorced woman loses her five children). Furthermore, even when women join men in the anti-colonial fight, they are still criticized and devalued.
The film uses body politics to visually articulate this pervasive discipline (Baer, 2016, p. 23). The recurring, striking sequence of women in black abayas and niqabs sitting motionless on a sunny beach is juxtaposed with the men and boys playing in the water serves as a powerful means of critiquing male/female social space.. This scene visually demonstrates the strict discipline and control imposed on female bodies and movement. Their stillness symbolizes their unequal access to public space, leisure, and full social participation. Within the realm of the home, the audience witnesses covert acts of resistance where the women utilize a wedding celebration as a cover to smuggle guns and ammunition, and communicating through singing certain songs to warn that soldiers are approaching. Their efforts in aiding their fighters are seen through improvised attacks of throwing pots and pouring boiling oil over the heads of soldiers. These scenes of women’s solidarity and contribution defy the official, male-centric narratives in history.
https://mosaically.com/photomosaic/8ac28a1a-086d-4cec-9122-304d1561a53f
I have created an interactive digital mosaic of Leila and the Wolves composed of its key scenes. Its design mirrors the function of collective memory itself. The fragments of experience when gathered, come together to form a collage of resistance. This modality is inspired by modern digital feminist tactics (eg. #YesAllWomen) that use compilation and transnational formats to expose the pervasive, structural nature of oppression (Baer, 2016, p. 18). Therefore, effectively "redoing feminism" by linking individual moments to collective experience (p. 29). The interactive element encourages the audience to reconstruct the pieces of overlooked history, conveying that women's contributions will continue to be undermined or forgotten unless actively re-centered and engaged with (p. 19).
References
Baer, H. (2016). Redoing feminism: digital activism, body politics, and neoliberalism. Feminist Media Studies, 16(1), 17–34.
Schotten, C. H. (2022). TERFism, Zionism, and right-wing annihilationism: Toward an internationalist genealogy of extinction phobia. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 9(3), 334-364.
Srour, Heiny. (2025). Leila and the Wolves. 93’.
