The Borrowed Dress Receives a Special Mention at the Beirut Women International Film Festival

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The Borrowed Dress Receives a Special Mention at the Beirut Women International Film Festival


Director Leen Alfaisal's documentary film The Borrowed Dress received a Special Mention at the 2nd Beirut Women International Film Festival (BWFF) that closed on March 15. This comes in coincidence with its Egyptian premiere at the 8th Luxor African Film Festival (LAFF) within its Freedom Competition.

Beirut International Women Film Festival (BWFF)is an annual event held in Beirut that brings together
filmmakers and cinema lovers from all over the world. BWFF tackles issues such as gender equality, sexual identity, and domestic violence, through the power of the lens and cinema which is the window on society and particularly women in this case.

The Borrowed Dress world premiered at the London International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema, where it competed for the Best Foreign Language Documentary, Best Director of a Foreign Language Documentary and the Best Editing of a Short Documentary. The film made its Arab world premiere at the 3rd Karama Beirut Human Rights Film Festival in Lebanon, and screened at the Malmö Arab Film Festival in Sweden and the Karama Human Rights Film Festival in Jordan.

Grandmother Susu (80 years old), her daughter Doaa (50 years old), and her grandchild Saad (16 years old) are forced to flee Syria after the beginning of the revolution to live in different scattered places, with the one thing left to share being their desire to reunite. The details of their personal stories and human experiences are microcosms of two stories: one of a population that has spread all over the world, and the other of a homeland that might have changed forever.

Written and directed by Leen Alfaisal, The Borrowed Dress is produced by Sarah Hassan and Alaa Alassad (Creative Media Solutions). The film stars Siham Abu Nabbout, Doaa Al Zoabi and Saad Alkuwatly. The Borrowed Dress is distributed in the Arab world by MAD Solutions.

Leen Alfaisal is a Dubai-based video producer and camerawoman working at CNN International. Alfaisal graduated with honors from the American University in Dubai, with a major in journalism and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies and documentary film.

The Borrowed Dress is her first venture into feature documentary directing. She directed her first short documentary film, Without a Frame, during university, which made it into the final selection of the Original Narrative Student Short Film Festival in Dubai and the Arab Short Film Festival in Beirut.