Looking for Oum Kulthum

At a glance

Looking for Oum Kulthum, is a 2017 Qatari movie, directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, and starring Neda Rahmanian, Yasmine Raeis, Mehdi Moinzadeh. with a runtime of 90 minutes.

Overview

Looking for Oum Kulthum is an Iranian-German film-within-a-film that examines the enduring price paid by women artists who dare to transcend the boundaries of patriarchal societies. An Iranian woman filmmaker living in exile sets out to document the life and art of the legendary Arab diva Oum Kulthum, only to find the parallels between her subject's struggles and her own running uncomfortably close. Both navigated creative ambition within systems designed to contain them. The film operates on two timelines simultaneously — the legendary past and the filmmaker's fraught present — crafting a layered meditation on gender, exile, artistic freedom, and the enduring cost of being a woman who refuses to be silent.

Tags