In this time of confrontation, we need to make and see films that smash relationships of domination. Films that meet both our realities and our need to imagine our victories.
Alexandra DOLS
ABOUT
Alexandra Dols is a writer, director and producer. She graduated in cinematography from Paris University, where she specialized in scriptwriting and directing. In 2006, she cofounded Hybrid Pulse, an association sustaining a feminist, self-governance perspective that aims at supporting female directors. Within Hybrid Pulse, she has produced two feature documentaries about various struggles in the Arab world.
MOUDJAHIDATE (“female fighters”, in Arabic) (2008-75’) presents Algerian women who joined the struggle for their country’s independence as resistance fighter, liaison officer, prisoner or who were involved but not recognized as fighters. Their stories are intertwined with that of historian Danièle Djamila Amrane, herself a moudjahida.
BEYOND THE FRONTLINES. TALES OF RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE IN PALESTINE (2017-113 ’) looks at the consequences of the occupation, and the resilience and resistance of Palestinians. Led by psychiatrist and writer Dr Samah Jabr, this road movie is composed of interweaving interviews and offers multiple visual experiments. It seeks to reveal what is otherwise invisible, what is happening beyond the frontlines.
“The poetry of Alexandra Dols’ film has nothing to do with escaping,” as French Pan-African and revolutionary collective Cases Rebelles writes it. Beyond the frontlines has had a national release in France and will soon be released in Italy as well. It has received several awards and is regularly selected by international festivals. Internationally-acclaimed and multi-awarded British director Ken Loach has taken notice of the film and encouraged audiences to see it.
The work of Alexandra Dols has caught the attention of French labour union Solidaires, who commissioned a documentary on the fight against homophobia and transphobia in the workplace and within their own union: MINIMUM SYNDICAL! (2019-26 ‘).
Alexandra Dols is currently returning to fiction and writing a medium-length film: LOVE STORIES. DALIDA, SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES.
Issues of emancipation and liberation struggles, their individual and collective stories, are a core component of her work, of its beauty and its poetry.