Variety described 'Honey and Ashes as "Edgy, intelligent...a passionate statement about the condition of women in the Arab world". This captures the film perfectly.
The film follows the lives of three young women in a North African Islamic country and their struggle in a patriarchal society between their desires and the obligations of their culture.
The youngest of the women is Leila, who is in love with a young man already engaged to his cousin. In her attempt to hide the relationship from her authoritarian father she is victim to abuse and ridicule and forced to run away from her family.
Naima is the protagonist of the second story. She is a successful forty-something doctor pressured into an arranged marriage with somebody she doesn't love.
Amina lives with her husband and young daughter and is the subject of horrific physical abuse from which she cannot escape.
The raw violence in 'Honey and Ashes' emphasises the repression of woman, man's attitude towards them and the desperate measures one of these women takes to try and gain control of her life.
These three completely separate stories intertwine with each other as we witness a battle between modernity and tradition. This juxtaposition between the traditional and the contemporary can perhaps be linked to the title of the film in which sweet tasting honey contrasts with the bitterness of death and ashes. The authentic music and dancing express the culture and contrast with the reality of the unhappiness and violence of a film which results in tragedy.
The film follows the lives of three young women in a North African Islamic country and their struggle in a patriarchal society between their desires and the obligations of their culture.
The youngest of the women is Leila, who is in love with a young man already engaged to his cousin. In her attempt to hide the relationship from her authoritarian father she is victim to abuse and ridicule and forced to run away from her family.
Naima is the protagonist of the second story. She is a successful forty-something doctor pressured into an arranged marriage with somebody she doesn't love.
Amina lives with her husband and young daughter and is the subject of horrific physical abuse from which she cannot escape.
The raw violence in 'Honey and Ashes' emphasises the repression of woman, man's attitude towards them and the desperate measures one of these women takes to try and gain control of her life.
These three completely separate stories intertwine with each other as we witness a battle between modernity and tradition. This juxtaposition between the traditional and the contemporary can perhaps be linked to the title of the film in which sweet tasting honey contrasts with the bitterness of death and ashes. The authentic music and dancing express the culture and contrast with the reality of the unhappiness and violence of a film which results in tragedy.
