Introduced by the director Shirin Neshat.

Mitra is an ambitious artist in her forties who embarks on her dream project of making a film about the legendary Egyptian singer and diva Oum Kulthum. Her film explores the struggles, sacrifices and the price of Oum Kulthum’s success as a female artist in a male-dominated society. Having left her family behind for her career and in her efforts to capture the essence of Oum Kulthum as a myth, a woman and an artist, Mitra’s own struggles blend with those of the singer and she finds herself caught in an emotional and artistic breakdown.
$10 adults / $5 under 18

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Her first feature-length film, Women Without Men, received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival.

Neshat’s early photographic works include the Women of Allah series (1993–1997), which explored the question of gender in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy. Her subsequent video works departed from overtly political content or critique in favor of more poetic imagery and complex human narratives. Neshat continues to explore and experiment with the mediums of photography, video and film. Her most recent bodies of work include the photographic series The Book of Kings (2012), The Home of My Eyes (2015) and the trilogy Dreamers (2013-16).