Nawal El Saadawi

After Mexico 75 and Copenhagen 80, the United Nations choose the Dark Continent for the Third International Women’s Conference. Running in parallel to the official Governments Conference, is the Non Governmental Organizations Forum attended by 14 000 women. For 10 days, they meet on the Nairobi University Campus to discuss feminist and general political issues: peace, development, Apartheid, Islam, lesbianism, violence and sexual mutilation, Israel/Palestine, etc.

In the Arab world, women are fighting a two-front war against repressive internal constraints and intrusive Western interference. In this program, a feminist delegation composed of author Nawal Saadawi and other renowned activists from the Middle East and North Africa gathers at the UN, on college campuses, and in church basements to speak out about deterioration of women's rights in the Arab states in an effort to heighten awareness of the Arab feminist struggle for equality--and the effects of U.S. foreign policy on their efforts.

It begins in the days after Sadat's assassination in 1981 by an islamist cell of army officers. The American media had led an outpouring of shock and grief in the United States at the death of the heroic president. All the western leaders then travelled to Cairo to say goodbye to the man who had courageously changed the course of history. But then they found that practically no Egyptians turned up to the funeral. And the western politicians and the American TV reporters couldn't understand why. The documentary tries to find the answer.