Dolls: A Woman from Damascus

IFFR is offering a home-in-exile to the Visual Arts Festival Damascus, since it cannot take place in Syria this year.

Manal, a young woman from a traditional Damascene milieu, tries to keep up the image of perfect housewife and mother expected by the community: always busy and loving, fulfilled by caring for her husband and children. Her two young daughters are fascinated by a new product on the toy market: Fulla, the Arab Barbie doll, the perfect personification of such ideals, carefully marketed to transmit the idea of the devout, subordinate and pious woman to young girls.
Behind her facade, however, Manal misses her professional life before she became a mother, and the satisfaction it gave her. She starts looking for a job, refusing to give up her personal dream, despite the constant pressure she faces. The film interweaves interviews with the Fulla marketing manager with conversations with Manal to investigate the social climate of growing conservatism and the effect it has on women’s lives.