»A drawing is only good if the soul of the artist speaks from it. Artists must be free.« This quote by Moroccan artist Zainab Fasiki is the hook of the ARTE reportage 4 Arab Women Comic Book Artists. It tells the stories of Tunisian Nadia Khiari, Lebanese Lena Merhej, Moroccan Zainab Fasiki and Egyptian Deena Mohamed. They are all comic artists from the Arab world and, a decade after the Arab Spring, share what their work as comic artists means to them and their homeland.
Lena Merhej is now in her mid-40s and grew up in the Lebanese civil war, which ended when she was 13. In the reportage, we see her in Beirut, the Beirut after the explosion disaster in August 2020. Merhej herself arrived in the Lebanese capital four months after the explosion. It had been a concern for her to draw Beirut as it once was. She spreads her comic drawings everywhere in the Arab area, gives workshops there. She has illustrated her own alphabet of the Lebanese revolution for young people, in which each letter stands for an event.
In Tunisia, ARTE visits the press artist Nadia Khiari. Ten years after the new constitution, she regularly publishes satirical drawings of the cat Willis. A pseudonym behind which she wants to remain anonymous, despite all the promises of the government, because she does not believe in these very promises. With her drawings, she wants to reach young people in particular - after all, half the country is under 30 - and gives workshops under the motto »Ten Years of Freedom of the Press.«
Zainab Fasiki, who was quoted at the beginning, lives in Casablanca and calls herself a »Moroccan feminist«. It has become her trademark to draw her own body naked, to stage herself as an oversized superhero. In the film, she talks about the feelings and the consequences for her that result from this.
Lastly, the travels go to Cairo, to Deena Mohamed. During the revolution she was only 16, went to high school. She says she had no direction, but she understood that everyone had an opinion - including herself. Her story is about the emergence of her character Qahera, a veiled superhero who draws attention to sexualized violence against women.
4 Arab Women Comic Book Artists is a feature by Lizzie Treu and Eloïse Fagard (2021).
