Leila and the Wolves

A docu-drama about the fight against victimisation of Arab women. An unlikely interlocutor garbed in a sheer white dress, Leila time-travels through the eight decades of this century, stopping here (at a time of revolution when women larded wedding invitations with news of hidden arms) and there (when young girls at the barricades are goaded into fatal action by chauvinist remarks). Visually, Heiny Srour's film is a treat, combining tinted newsreel footage with memorable images and clearly loving shots of a strife-torn nation; the acts of courage she reveals, and the example she sets to other film-makers to engage their own history, are exalting.