The Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement has been disrupting gender and ecological hierarchies across the Middle East. In this stimulating, bifurcated film, shot among the mountains of Kurdistan, a village for women in northern Syria, and a farming community in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, Marwa Arsanios uses an array of striking formal strategies—including the frequent disassociation of sound and image—to track the movement’s influence and the efforts of autonomous women’s groups to reclaim land amidst the Rojava revolution.

Marwa Arsanios is an artist, filmmaker and researcher. She approaches research collaboratively and seeks to work across disciplines. Her practice explores the aesthetics of nation building, and its impact on the intertwined experiences of labour, consumption, and the body. Recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Hammer Projects, Los Angeles (2016); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2016); Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2015); and Art in General, New York (2015). Based in Beirut, she is a founding member of 98weeks, an artistic organization and project space in the city, which focuses its research on a new topic every 98 weeks.