The course will focus on the strategies and tactics filmmakers in Middle Eastern countries adopt in order to bypass censorship laws and   criticize the regimes as well as social practices in their societies. We will follow the developments the cinema industry in the various Middle Eastern countries went through from the days it reflected the hegemonic socio-political agenda till last decades when it turned to be a critical channel through which filmmakers criticize the autocratic rulers and those who collaborate with them. The main issues that will be discussed in the Egyptian, Palestinian, Turkish and Iranian films that will be screened in the course of the semester are gender issues concerning women's rights, children-parents relationship in patriarchal-traditional societies, polygamy, children and childhood in times of war, The ways revolutions are being constructed and re-constructed by filmmakers, especially the 1952 Egyptian revolution and the Arab Spring revolutions and finally the unveiled leaders.