Fawzia (Maali Zayed) is a mature woman of great beauty and is married to journalist Ahmed (Mahmoud Abdel Aziz), a powerful man who sees her in the context of the harem, ergo the arbitrary limits within which women are confined to a domestic role circumscribed by the male patriarch.
She rebels against this life to the point of deciding to become a man, confiding her troubles but not her plan to her friend and co-worker Samira (Hala Fouad).
[1] Bahraini film critic Hassan Haddad writes on his website, Cinematech Haddad: Raafat el-Mehi uses a social satirical drama to critique the image and reality of men in society still attached to the old patriarchal view of family…While he el-Mehi burlesques the inequality between the sexes, he also dismisses the woman’s sex change as an inadequate solution given the troubled marriage of Fawzy and Samira in which Ahmed becomes the jilted one as he had jilted Fawzia.
El-Mehi successfully presents this argument through a film both complex in its social commentary and rich in its cinematic visual invention.
[2]Marwan Shahin writes for the news site Al Bawaba: The film satirizes the dimensions of gender relations from a social and psychological perspective, critiquing a society of men tied to antiquated notions of the family with barbs aimed everything from the housing crisis and economic stagnation to underpaid doctors and women delaying marriage.