The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived

Director: Heiny Srour

1974 / 62min / DCP

An astonishing, and fierily partisan, record of an uprising in southern Oman’s Dhofar governorate by a Marxist-Leninist guerilla force who held out for almost 14 years against the UK-backed Sultanate, the result of Srour and her crew braving the incoming shells of the Royal Air Force so as to bear firsthand witness to events on the ground and hear the protagonists of the ongoing struggle speaking for themselves. Tahar Cheriaa, then holder of a position at the French Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (Agency of Cultural and Technical Cooperation), was instrumental in helping Srour line up funding to finish editing her film, which had finished shooting in 1971; when it debuted at Cannes three years later, it became the first feature directed by a woman from the Arab world to do so.

Distributor: Several Futures

Part of Tahar Cheriaa: Chronicles of a Pan-African Pioneer