Director’s Statement

During my childhood, a friend’s sister committed suicide, which was a dramatic event that we never talked about, because our teachers at school had a meeting with us specifically asking us, as children, not to bring up the subject. Until I graduated from school, I never mentioned it.

Recently, in 2014, one of my friends committed suicide and again something similar happened, no one talked about it. Even though this was after radical and far-reaching political and societal changes had taken place in Egypt, and we believed people were becoming more open; we could still not talk about it. We spent months trying to avoid it, and one day, when we discussed the subject, one of my friends specifically asked us not to tell other people that it was a suicide – it was still considered to be a shameful act.

Inspired by my childhood friend whom I never had the chance to comfort, my goal on the one hand is to explore how she dealt with the tragedy of her sister’s suicide, with no one willing to talk about the subject; and on the other hand to reveal the context and the subtext of the daily life of someone who commits suicide.

Producer’s Note

Suicide is a sensitive, complex and absolutely major taboo presently in the Middle East with numbers rising steeply especially among young Arab women. I see, on a larger scale as a keen writer and researcher in subjects like relationships among socio-political structures and hierarchies re-presented by social media and virtual reality in general, that Arab women are in ongoing reflexive turmoil state of suicide accepting the oppressive social and personal norms they experience on a daily basis.

From this perspective, the physical suicide of the Arab woman could be seen, tragically, as her salvation from more broad and inclusive human suicide, because she refuses to live these utterly painful circumstances, and that tragic situation urges me – as an Egyptian producer and writer, and more importantly, human being – to act accordingly, in a responsible way, towards this cause.

When I read the Soad script, I felt instantly that it intersects with this sensitive subject and my deep concerns around it, in a fresh, sensitive and original way. I've touched through it the suffering of young Egyptian people, especially young women, caused by social and religious conservatism espoused with political frustration, and I felt obliged to have a role in this fresh cinematic message, chiefly because the world of cinema hasn’t dealt enough with this subject internationally.

Producer’s Filmography

2016: Cheerful Giver

2015: Expired

2015: Under the Pyramid

2015: The Visit

2015: Dream Away

2015: Ramady

2015: I Have a Picture

2014: Al Araba Al Madfuna II

2013: Mice Room

2012: Ahlam

2011: Microphone

2008: Atef