rmanory Review of Sand Storm

Sand Storm (2016)

A story about women in a conservative Muslim society

[9/10 · 22 October 2016]

I saw this movie after it has received the Ofir award for best movie- the Israeli Oscar, which will make it the Israeli submission for the foreign language Academy award. I think it is a good movie in its novelty. The movie depict Bedouin life in modern Israel, although there is no sign really that this is the country where this story takes place, as the language is only Arabic and only an Israeli plate on the father's car indicates that the country is Israel. Much is already known about the treatment of women in Arab society, but here the father seems to be progressive: he sends his daughter Layla to school, and even considers university...she drives and believes that her father is different than other Bedouin fathers. To her dismay she finds that he isn't. On one hand the movie deals with the issue of polygamy, but is actually deals with all the issues affecting women in Arab society: the power of a husband to ban his wife and send her to her parents, the position of the father of daughters in the Bedouin society, the "do" and "don't" when it comes to family life. The movie revolves around the "must" issues. The father feels that the society expects from him to behave in a certain way, where the women in his life expect him to be different. The father might be willing to allow his daughter to drive and to study, but this seems to be the limit of his openness to Western values, to the huge disappointment of Layla.