TUESDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER 2025 | 7PM | £10 ADV // £8 CONCS
What does it mean to lose your voice?
Not just as a woman, but as a symbol, a witness, and a body in revolt.
The Sandpit Collective, in partnership with the University of Sussex, continues the Other Asias film programme with the second event in our current cycle: Aswaat / Voices. This thematic season explores voice, resistance, and representation in postcolonial and feminist cinema.
We began Aswaat / Voices in April 2025 with our event Feminism Inshallah, tracing the histories of Arab feminism. Now, we return this autumn with Nahla (1979), a rarely screened Algerian film that explores voice as a marker of presence, absence, and control.
Set in Beirut in 1975, on the brink of the Lebanese Civil War, Nahla follows four characters navigating the city’s rising unrest: Nahla, a singer who abruptly loses her voice on stage; her sister Maha, a feminist journalist; Hind, a Palestinian activist; and Larbi, an Algerian reporter swept into the chaos. The film stages the politics of silence, showing how war, sectarianism, and censorship shape expression and erase agency. Featuring a score composed by the iconic Ziad al-Rahbani whose ensemble-of-one cameo underscores the tension between artistic dissent and political silence.
Shot in Lebanon by an Algerian director during a moment of regional upheaval, Nahla captures the radical energies of 1970s Maghrebi–Levantine solidarity, Palestinian resistance, and leftist critique.
Through symbolic imagery and fragmented storytelling, it reflects on how women’s voices are suppressed, mythologised, and reclaimed in a region shaped by the legacies of colonialism and authoritarian power.
We will also engage in open critical conversation:
• How does Nahla archive and disrupt conventional histories of Arab women, journalism, and performance?
• Can voice exist within the rubble of war and sectarian tension?
• What is the role of cinema in either reclaiming or mythologizing women’s speech?
Nahla (Farouk Beloufa, 1979) | ~110 min
Arabic and French with English subtitles
Editing and Montage: Moufida Tlatli
Doors: 7pm
Screening time: 7:30 pm
Post-Screening: Dance the Pain Away
Immediately following the screening, join us in The Rose Hill for a collective act of release through sound and movement. Let Ziad al-Rahbani turn silence into movement and shake away the emotional weight of the film.