Reviews & Quotes | As I Want

Business Doc Europe
"gripping, important and impressively powerful"
"both angry and inspiring"
"As I Want is an important and impressively powerful film about the fight for liberation and emancipation, with harrowing real-life stories helping drive women to show their collective power against ignorance and hostility."

Middle East Eye
“pulsating with raw emotion”
“the most unsettling viewing this writer had at the Berlinale”

Joseph Fahim (Middle East Eye) on Twitter
“Of all the brilliant films I've seen this year so far at @berlinale, no other title has shaken me as hard as Samaher AlQadi's "As I Want," a raw, hard-hitting record of sexual harassment as experienced by the director in Cairo from 2011-2014. A brave and important work that must be seen by a wide audience.”

Qantara.de
“While Al-Qadi’s film largely limits itself to the period when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power, its reach goes far beyond this specific episode. The structural reasons for the oppression of women are similar right across the world and, for Al-Qadi, combatting them is a universal task.”

Cineuropa
"a decently engaging non-fiction feature and, most importantly, it represents a strong cinematic bid against women’s oppression in the Arab world."

Filmdienst
“The activist film combines personal confession and an imaginary dialogue with the deceased mother with a vehement charge against sexual violence and disenfranchisement in Arab society. A documentary essay that aims to encourage women to make themselves heard and to fight for their rights.”

The National
"A documentary that feels like a protest song"

Le Polyester
"c’est peu dire que ce documentaire urgent constitue un témoignage d’une puissance extraordinaire"
Translation: "It is an understatement to say that this urgent documentary constitutes a testimony of extraordinary power"

Hey u Guys
"a tribute to the courageous women of Egypt" "The road to equality will be arduous, but Alqadi’s film shows that these women are more than ready for the journey."

C7nema
"As I Want complements [stories of emancipation and struggles against patriarchy in global cinema] with courage, determination and quality, being in itself an act of resistance, both local and universal."

Desistfilm
"As I Want is a feminist plea, moving because of its strength and activism, from which we value the filmmaker as a character who confronts, who provokes situations to highlight macho attitudes and anti-rights; Alqadi denounces, emphasises, cries out, and transmits the desire for freedom of thousands of women who remain, despite their intense activism, under the yoke of the government and the creeds."

South China Morning Post
“a powerful labour of love”

Neues Deutschland
“By linking the subjective narrative level with the political and social structures, 'As I Want' presents a multi-layered picture of the internal and external liberation movements in which women are engaged. Alqadi documents their struggle, which the viewer observes in amazement and shock."

Filmlöwin
“Samaher Alqadi gelingt es, den schmerzhaften Bruch mit den Tabuthemen und die daran geknüpfte, selbstbewusste Ermächtigung der Frauen zu dokumentieren, schon lange vor der MeToo-Bewegung.”
Translation: "Samaher Alqadi succeeds in documenting the painful disruption of taboo subjects and the self-confident empowerment of women that was linked to it, long before the MeToo movement."

Film-Rezensionen.de
“Doch As I Want scheint sich nicht nur als eine Illustration des gegenwärtigen Zustandes zu verstehen, sondern vielmehr als eine Art Ursprungsforschung, welche von einem Symptom ausgeht.”
Translation: "But As I Want seems to be seen not only as an illustration of the current state, but rather as a kind of research into the origins, which starts from a symptom."

Film-Rezensionen.de
"As I Want ist eine Dokumentation über Geschlechterbilder, über sexuelle Gewalt und die Nachwehen des Arabischen Frühlings. Teils kämpferisch, teils enttäuscht über das Ergebnis der Revolution zeigt sich Samaher Alqadi, die mutig in ihrer eigenen Geschichte nach dem Ursprung für jenen Hass sucht, den man in den Straßen Kairos spürt.”
Translation: "As I Want is a documentary about gender images, sexual violence and the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Partly ready to take on the fight, partly disappointed by the outcome of the revolution, Samaher Alqadi courageously searches her own history for the origin of the hatred felt in the streets of Cairo."

Modern Times
"As I Want is not merely a document of these women’s uprising against the Islamist Morsi and all he represents. It’s also a cinematic letter from the director to her mother – a woman she loves dearly who nevertheless raised her to loathe herself. The political and the personal inextricably intertwined."

Modern Times
" «You died suffocating, Mamma.» Which pretty much encapsulates what these brave activists are actually fighting against – and for. Nothing less than the chance to simply exhale."

Backseat Mafia
“As I Want is a powerful and emotive documentary which traces the daily hardships and privations for millions of women living in Egypt. It’s not easy viewing, at times, but Alqadi’s film has never been timelier. It’s an incredibly brave film which both captures the personal impact of toxic masculinity and serial misogyny as well as illustrating the wider trauma it places on a society. As I Want serves as a wake-up call for men everywhere.”

Globalnyt
“Dokumentarfilmen ’As I want’ er et ekstremt personligt projekt, der brænder af vrede og syder af afmagt, men som samtidig aldrig bliver irrelevant for tilskueren.”
Translation: “The documentary ‘As I want’ is an extremely personal project that burns with anger and sighs with powerlessness, but at the same time never becomes irrelevant to the viewer.”

The New Arab
"As I Want proves and articulates what Angela Davis has termed the "indivisibility of freedom", that is the impossibility to fight against one form of injustice while overlooking others."