Aswaat/ Voices: Nahla

The Sandpit Collective and the University of Sussex recommence the Other Asias Film Programme with the next chapter of our Aswaat / Voices cycle—an interrogation of Arab feminist and postcolonial expression through Maghrebi cinema. Following our April launch with Feminism Inshallah, we return on Tuesday, 2 September 2025, exploring the continuity of feminine voice, resistance, and representation.

• Director: Farouk Beloufa • Year: 1979 • Duration: ~110 min • Language: Arabic/French, English subtitles 
• Montage and Editing Moufida Tlatli
• Screening Time: 7:30 PM

A rare Algerian cinematic intervention, Nahla unfolds in March 1975 Beirut—on the brink of civil war. Anchored in leftist Maghrebi-Lebanese solidarity, the film centres on four intersecting voices: Nahla, the eponymous singer who abruptly loses her voice; Maha, her sister and a feminist journalist; Hind, a Palestinian activist; and Larbi, an Algerian reporter swept into the maelstrom.

As Nahla's voice fails onstage, the film graphically stages the politics of silence—how personal refusal becomes intertwined with state censorship, war, and sectarian rupture. It posits voice not simply as expression, but as bodily risk—the loss of voice equating to the loss of agency .

Shot in Lebanon by an Algerian director at the outset of a brutal war, Nahla channels mid-70s intellectual ferment: Kissinger’s diplomacy, regional assassinations, Palestinian struggle—all echo through its elliptical narrative.

The film’s score, composed by Ziad al‑Rahbani - Lebanon’s famed political pianist and composer, whose ensemble-of-one cameo underscores the tension between artistic dissent and political silence complicates the film’s narrative: it is melody in defiance, voice in resistance.

Post‑Screening: Dance the Pain Away

Immediately after the film, join us in the Rose Hill for “Dance the Pain Away” — a communal sonic ritual designed to exorcise the emotional weight of the film. Turn silence into movement, let embodied disruption carry the echoes of Aswaat forward.