LOOKING FOR OUM KULTHUM

2017, 90”, produced by Razor Film, Coop99, In Between Art Film, and Vivo Film

SHIRIN NESHAT

Iranian born artist/filmmaker living in New York, Shirin has won the Biennale award twice in 1999 with her video work and in 2009 with her first feature film “Women Without Men” which received the “Silver Lion Award”. Her photographic and video works have been displayed in all the greatest museums. She received the Chrystal Award in 2014 at the Davos World Economic Forum. Shirin Neshat has worked on her script “Looking for Oum Kulthum” with Shoja Azari and Jean-Claude Carrière, one of most respected writers and also winner of the Academy Honorary Award.

A film within a film, Shirin Neshat’s Looking for Oum Kulthum (2017) tells the story of Mitra, an ambitious Iranian director, mother and wife in her late 40s, who is working on her dream project: a film about the life of legendary Egyptian singer and diva Oum Kulthum (1904-1975), whose music and extraordinary personality are still loved by millions of Middle Easterners.

Mitra’s film explores the struggles, sacrifices and the price of Oum Kulthum’s success as a female artist in a male-dominated society. However, having left her family behind for her career and in the efforts to capture the essence of Oum Kulthum as a myth, a woman and an artist, Mitra’s own struggles blend with those of the singer as she finds herself caught in an emotional and artistic breakdown.