IN THE SHADOW OF A MAN is a fly-on-the-wall view that offers an unexpected picture of what it is like, or rather feels like, to be an Egyptian woman.

Director Hanan Abdalla succeeds in not only identifying but also unlocking four formidable personalities to tell their story. Wafaa, Suzanne, Shahinda and Badreya each present an intimate insight into their lives, largely defined by their relationship with men. They talk of subjects  to which any Western women can relate – how to pick the right man to marry, the struggle to strike a balance between family and professional life, the importance of education in securing your independence, along with the heartache caused by an unhappy marriage, divorce and sexual abuse. We could have been invited into a home anywhere in the world for (as Adballa described her interviews in the Skype Q&A that followed the screening) a “gossip,” but knowing that the everyday challenges of which the subjects speak take place against the backdrop of the Egyptian revolution adds poignancy.

… these women have opened their hearts and not just their homes to the camera.

The strength of IN THE SHADOW OF A MAN lies in its honesty. During the course of a little over an hour, you really feel like these women have opened their hearts and not just their homes to the camera. It is a real woman-to-woman bonding session through a lens. One of the interviewees even talks to us as she puts on her make-up and prepares nervously for a date. She chats about the several marriage proposals she has received and how the more educated she becomes, the less she is impressed by men; before deftly moving onto the subject of inappropriate relations with her grandfather that left her emotionally wounded and with trust issues.

The flow of all of the interviews is organic and not at all contrived, although Abdalla admits to filming five hours of footage with each subject; so there must have been a great deal of editing intervention in order to end up with the accomplished storytelling of the end result. Across the light and shade of each of the exchanges, these women display a sense of humour that you would not conceive possible having seen recent news footage of the political unrest that surrounds them. And it is refreshing that the vast majority of this documentary consists of tight shots of the women talking about their lives, and conveying true emotion with their every expression  from the comfort of their armchairs, rather than taking us out onto the streets to capture the more familiar social landscape of Egypt.

These women actually seem to be dancing in the shadows…

Abdalla said that with IN THE SHADOW OF A MAN she embraced the opportunity to depict the quiet resistance movement and gender restructuring occurring in the average Egyptian home behind the more overt revolution taking place in outside society; and on that front she certainly wins. This documentary is full of positive, uplifting female representatives. But as one audience member pointed out, IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHADOW OF A MAN might have been a more fitting title: the relative absence of men in the film means that we are left with only the women’s perspective on emancipation. And as the women talk with energy about the independence and personal joy they have achieved, albeit by staying single or getting divorced, there is contradiction. These women actually seem to be dancing in the shadows, if it is indeed a half light that they inhabit at all.

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