In this award-winning documentary, directors Masri and Chamoun turn their attention to the women who played a crucial role in the struggle against the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon. Capturing their stories on camera, the film stands as a deeply moving document of courage, resistance and hope. Mai Masri is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of Palestinian documentary cinema. Her work focuses on the entangled histories of Lebanon and Palestine through a poetic and humanist lens, with women and children at its centre. She worked closely with her late husband, the Lebanese filmmaker Jean Chamoun. Together they received numerous international awards. The film is often considered a sister work to Leila and the Wolves — an intimate portrait of women’s experiences under occupation. Decades later, these stories resonate more urgently than ever.

About Saddie Choua

Artist Saddie Choua hosts this evening at NW in collaboration with Sint Lucas Antwerpen. Gaza and South Lebanon lie in ruins, bearing the scars of a devastating genocide and war. Israeli military violence continues to destabilise the region, destroying communities and disrupting lives. Artists and local communities are searching for ways to care, reconnect and rebuild. As part of an exchange between Sint Lucas Antwerpen and Birzeit University, we are especially pleased to welcome a Palestinian delegation visiting their colleagues in Antwerp this June.

After leaving her summer residency at Be-Part in Rhizome Kortrijk last year as an act of solidarity in order to join the Sumud Flotilla bound for Gaza, Saddie Choua will travel to Lebanon this summer for a residency within the Halaqat project M/otherlands: Reimagining Care Across Borders at Hunna Arts Culture Center — a residency programme for women and mother-artists that simultaneously supports families displaced by war in Lebanon. It is from that same spirit that NW, at the invitation of Saddie Choua, seeks to establish a genuine sisterhood with Hunna Arts Culture Center — not as a one-off gesture, but as an enduring relationship of friendship between two places that believe in art, care and solidarity as responses to a world in crisis.

Throughout the work of Saddie Choua — from De Dwaze Moeders and the Salon of Fatima Mernissi at Villa Empain to Het Maandblad van de Allochtone Vrouw — sisterhood remains central: the ways women with migrant backgrounds, positioned at the margins of dominant narratives, connect, bear witness and care for one another. This tradition of sisterhood as both a political and artistic stance finds a powerful historical anchor in the Three Marias — Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa — who together wrote Novas Cartas Portuguesas in 1972 under dictatorship, turning writing itself into an act of resistance and care. In times marked by genocide and colonial discourse, Saddie Choua returns to the Three Marias through a collaboration between NW, Be-Part, ROBIN and RITCS.

Kitchen Stories

NW’s kitchen project will also form part of the evening. Through a shared meal, Kitchen Stories creates a space where conversation can take shape through care, hospitality and connection around the table.