Alyaa - The Naked Revolutionary

*8.0

Status

Released

Production

ARTE France Cinéma

Aired

2013-03-01

Alyaa - The Naked Revolutionary

Threatened with death in Egypt by religious fanatics, chased away by revolutionaries in Cairo's Tahrir Square, challenged by some Egyptian feminists, abandoned by her own friends, 20-year-old Aliaa Magda Elmahdy had no choice. She had to flee Egypt to survive. She sought refuge in Sweden, where the filmmakers found her. Her crime? Posing nude on her blog to denounce the hypocrisy surrounding women's bodies in the Arab world. A rather ordinary photo, in fact. She says she took the photo herself, with her own camera. Without influence. For her, it was an act of activism. That of a woman who embraces her sexuality in a macho world where the birth of a boy is a day of celebration and that of a girl is a nakba, a day of disaster.