"Leila and the Wolves" Film Screening & Discussion with Dr. Kareem Estefan

This screening is a part of The Philly Cinematheque, a new initiative housed in the Annenberg School for Communication. It brings a community-focused approach to an eclectic program of global film and television screenings. In doing so, it functions as both an informal gathering place and an intentional intervention to further embed cinema—as a modality, a space, and a method—in communications scholarship.

Drawing on the Arab tradition of "The Thousand and One Nights," Leila and the Wolves (1984) combines fictional drama, archival footage, fantasy sequences, mosaic pattern, and more to counter the colonial, male-dominated version of history. Leila, a Lebanese woman living in London, travels across time and space to explore the collective memory of Arab women in Palestine and Lebanon and their hidden roles in historical events.

Kareem Estefan is an Assistant Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he teaches subjects including Arab cinema, contemporary moving-image art, and decolonial theory. His book project, Portals to Palestine, conceptualizes acts of witnessing as anticolonial worldmaking through Palestinian film and media practices. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Feminist Media Histories, Screen, Third Text, and World Records, and in the collections Cinemas of Global Solidarity and Producing Palestine. Kareem is co-editor of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (OR Books, 2017).

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Host or Publisher Annenberg School for Communications