Originally intended as a film about internationally renowned feminist writer, Nawal El Saadawi, Hidden Faces develops into a fascinating portrayal of Egyptian women's lives in Muslim society.

Safaa Fathy, a young Egyptian woman living in Paris, returns home to interview the famed writer and activist, but becomes disillusioned with her. Illuminated by passages from El Saadawi's work, the film follows Fathy's journey to her family home and discovers similar complex frictions between modernity and tradition. Her mother's decision to return to the veil after twenty years and her cousins' clitoridectomies reveal a disturbing renewal of fundamentalism.

The absorbing documentary broaches the contradictions of feminism in a Muslim environment; a startling, unforgettable picture of contemporary women in an Arab world.