Denmark 2019, 59/88 min, HDA House of Real Production
by Marie Skovgaard
REQUEST A SCREENING The Reformist - A Female Imam
Sherin is opening one of Europe’s first mosques run by female imams. The Mosque’s members aim to confront and challenge the fear surrounding Islam and call for a new kind of it including a feminist agenda, effecting a break with established gender hierarchies.Sherin is impatient. She wants change and equality now! But her haste divides her organisation to the brink of collapse.
After her own divorce, Sherin openly begins granting islamic divorces to women unhappily married and performs inter-faith marriages of Muslim women and non-Muslim men. Having sacrificed her own marriage for the cause, Sherin wants to grant Muslim women the freedom to divorce and marry. But how do you break centuries of tradition from within a religion?
On this matter the new Mosque is divided. Should they work for their ideas in the shadows or in the public glare? Should they take baby steps or dare to do whatever it takes to achieve their own vision?
THE REFORMIST is a portrait of a fearless woman, who being the child of a Finnish mother and Syrian father, looks like no one's idea of an imam.
CPH:DOX, HotDocs, Wake-up Europe, Northern Lights, Women Deliver, Oslo Pix, Trondheim, Against Gravity, DokuFest Prizren, Nordisk Panorama (Best Nordic Doc nom.), Arab Film Festival Faroe Islands (Best Feature nom.), Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Arctic Heat, Festival des Libertés