Cinema Sabaya - Sisterhood of dreams

What is your dream?

Sabaya, translated into English, the Arabic word ‘Sabaya’ simply means women. Yet a slight mispronunciation can turn it into something altogether different; a prisoner of war. 

I have often been attracted to group of women coming together over conversations and stories. So when I was surfing for a good movie to watch on my international flight this movie caught my eye. With subtitles and mostly in Hebrew and Arabic the film touched me deeply. Women and their stories all over the world are same and different in many ways. But they all touch a feminine part of me which makes me proud to be a woman giving me both power and empathy. 

Cinema Sabaya, an international award winning movie starts with eight women coming together in a film making course. The teacher Rona takes them thru a journey of film making as her camera captures their vulnerabilities and strengths. 

They are asked: What is your dream? 

Someone has none at the age of 73 her life is fulfilled, someone wants to be a star or singer, someone wants to live life fully, be a grandmother, learn driving, have her own home.. some artistic and some practical, some far and some small. 

They touch upon sensitive topics like the language diversity of Hebrew and Arabic, Jews and Arabs, same sex relationships, religion and women in burqa, depression in men just like we do, not as an opinion but as an experience. 

The eight women film their house interiors,  record sounds like snoring, of a neighbor screaming at his wife. The snippets of videos from their lives - the cat babies, the dog on the yacht, the sound of water, the room on a boat, the sleeping children, the teen girl wanting to remove body hair. 

They capture the people they love and  narrate a love letter as it plays - a depressed husband cleaning his car, a husband cutting toe nails, running water reminding of childhood trauma, two sons fighting, all intimate moments of love and nostalgia. If I had to film Anoop it would be him folding clothes, vacuuming the house, sweeping or filling dishwasher as he enjoys his biggest stress buster aka OCD of cleaning. 

In the end the movie ends with a feeling that there are no happy endings, life continues. A dramatic climax doesn’t always mean that your life becomes better and you live happily ever after. You continue to dream with hope or suffering but life goes on. But you find your tribe of women to share it with and make it liveable.