Fadma: Even Ants Have Wings

Fadma: Even Ants Have Wings is an observational documentary about a women’s uprising in a small Berber village in Morocco that will have you chuckling in your cinema seat!

High up in the beautiful Atlas Mountains, strict division of labour dictates the lives of men and women in the village. The women fetch water, mind the children, do the cleaning and cooking, and take care of livestock. The men, on the other hand, work in the fields, and if there is little to do – which is frequently the case – they while away the day drinking tea and playing cards at the local coffee shop.

One day, however, Fadma arrives from Casablanca to visit her family. She and her husband live a far more egalitarian life in the city, and she is not one to accept unfairness when she sees it. In conversation with the women of the village she is baffled by their compliance and lack of demands to their husbands, and so sows the seeds of a small revolution: While the men of the village try to uphold status quo, the women decide that an all-out cooking strike is the only solution.

Gjermund Granlund

Director

Jawad Rhalib was born in 1965 in Morocco to Belgian Moroccan parents. Jawad was originally a journalist before he began making films in 1997. A writer and director, he focused his work on human rights issues, globalization, profits and social realism. His most famous feature film When Arabs Danced (2018) landed him the grand prize at Visions du Réel in Nyon.

This film is part of