The Poetess
Hissa Hilal, a 43-year-old woman from Saudi Arabia, achieved international fame when she was one of the few women to compete in a televised talent search for Arabic poets.
MILLION’S POET is a TV show which is broadcast from Abu Dhabi and is extremely popular in the Arabic world. Rather than having the participants sing or dance, as competitors do on many Western TV shows, the point here is the art of poetry. Most of the competitors are men. When Hissa first sees the show on television, she is struck to see that there are so few noteworthy female contestants, so she signs up. To her delight, she is invited to compete, quickly achieving international fame with her critical poems about extremism and unequal treatment of men and women.
Stefanie Brockhaus & Andreas Wolff, Germany, United Arab Emirates, 2017, 90 min. Arabic & English spoken, English subtitles.