Surat Chol

Elite Zexer's drama of a mother and daughter, both in rebellion against the traditional strictures of Bedouin life, melds an ethnographer's commitment to authenticity and a dramatist's sensitivity to emotional nuance. Jalila is charged with making a wedding celebration for her husband's second, much younger (much-resented) new bride -- in the midst of which her daughter Layla's surreptitious romance with a university student comes to light. Both women are caught in a tangled web of familial obligations and sexual humiliation -- a reactionary framework that continues to defy even rudimentary notions of Western individuality and freedom.