Sawt, which means voice in Arabic, is an animated documentary and multimedia initiative that serves as just that, a voice. The raison d’être of Sawt is to highlight the centrality of women during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and in this post-Mubarak era, through the voices of Egyptian women across the spectrum, from two fruit vendors in the rural Nile Delta with a knack for dark comedy, an all girl metal band in Alexandria to Bothaina Kamel, a popular television host and the first female presidential candidate in Egypt. As a film, Sawt, will take audiences into the lives of extraordinary Egyptian women by combining intimate interviews with creatively animated vignettes.
We feel that the discourse on women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa has almost exclusively centered on the hijab or veil without taking our lives, needs and desires as women into account. By using women’s voices and lived experiences as a lens through which to explore women’s rights and agency in the Arab World Sawt’s mission is to inspire a discussion that captures the realities, layered complexities and deep-seated contradictions of this issue.
