An Egyptian woman, Safaa Fathay, working as a researcher, and now living in Paris, has been commissioned to work as an interviewer on a film. She goes back to her country to meet the internationally celebrated feminist writer Nawal el Sadawi, whom she has always admired.

But rather than do a conventional portrait of the famous writer, as the other film crew are doing, and knowing the terrain intimately, she uses Nawal's writings as a springboard to examining her own upbringing and the lives of her sisters and cousins. (G.M.)