Written & Directed By

Sarah Mourad

Sarah Mourad is an emerging Egyptian filmmaker and screenwriter with a background in French studies from Ain Shams University. After exploring traditional career paths in teaching and journalism, she discovered her passion for visual storytelling in 2018. Sarah has participated in various filmmaking workshops, including those focused on feminist themes and director-actor dynamics.

Currently studying at the Jesuit Film School in Cairo, she leads the cinema department at the SuperWomen Initiative, where she founded the Cinema and Drama Observatory. Sarah is committed to addressing women’s issues through her work in communications at organizations like The New Woman Foundation. Her experiences range from coordinating the Cairo International Film Festival to assisting on the short film “But Not Forgotten,” which premiered at El Gouna Film Festival 2023.

Now, as a Partnerships and Communications Officer at Dawar for Arts and Development, Sarah continues to develop her own film projects and emphasizes the transformative power of cinema in society.

Director’s Statement:

Writing these lines still hurts. Yet through my work in civil society and human rights, I have met women — many women — trapped, just like me, in fixed social roles they are not allowed to break.

Pain is the core of my desire to tell this story. But beyond that, I want to affirm that this story happens — and will continue to happen — in different forms, driven by the deeply personal decisions we take to make sense of the world around us. This film is my outlet: a cry against hypocrisy and rigid social molds, and a gentle message of peace to my late father — the man who left this world without saying goodbye.

Part of this story is mine. I lost my father, Murad Labib, just one week before my 23rd birthday — on Tuesday, December 12, 2018, at 1:09 a.m. That moment changed everything. I was a recent graduate, drawn to ideas of justice and equality, but too cautious to demand them openly. I used to tell myself that sharing my beliefs with “safe circles” was enough. It wasn’t.

I still remember my trembling hands as I heard my mother’s sobs, the burning in my face, the first tears that marked the end of one world and the beginning of another. My father was a man of great tenderness — and great control. Our relationship was full of tension; I wanted space, freedom, choices of my own. In anger, I sometimes wished him gone. But when he died, my tears came like a flood — and I couldn’t tell exactly what I was mourning.

As C.S. Lewis once wrote in A Grief Observed: “The world has become like a worn-out cloth, limp from too much washing.”
That was how it felt — the color drained from everything.

At the wake, there were endless condolences, jokes, and absurd moments that bordered on the surreal. Even the priest tried to lighten the atmosphere, unaware that I was frozen between anger and disbelief. I wanted to scream at everyone, to throw them out, to cry, laugh, sing — to live the moment my way, not theirs.

This film is about that suffocating social gaze that tells us who we must be — and how much it costs to defy it. It’s about the self I’ve fought to reclaim, the one I remind — every time it gets trapped again — that it was never meant to fit inside anyone’s frame.

This story is my reconciliation with anger, and my peace offering to a father I loved in conflict. It carries a hope for change — not the kind born of revolutions, but from the quiet, brave acts of being truly oneself.

I hope that women — whether in Cairo or in small Egyptian towns — see a part of themselves in Bony (the phoenix, in Armenian). Some may not have the strength to follow her path, and that’s okay. But perhaps, one day, Bony can be their shelter — a reminder that rebirth begins when we dare to live as we are.