Antigone, the rebellious heroine of the ancient Greek tragedy, brings together a group of Syrian women in Beirut. This film captures the women’s reaction to and identification with a story that transcends time and circumstance. Audacious, stubborn and feisty, Antigone inspires each of these women to relearn their own strength and face their own Creon.
What the women performed on stage in 2014 was a subtle combination of themes from Sophocles’ Antigone, in addition to their own tragic tales from the home they’ve lost and the life they now live in a country that doesn’t want them. This was a chance for them directly to speak out in a sold-out theatre. However this film, their film, includes, poignantly, the outtakes, the nervousness, the moments of humor, the defiance that perhaps was missing on stage. What emerges is not tragedy but life-affirming defiance – the reassertion of their individuality.
THE TEAM
Find out about the team behind the film We Are Not Princesses; their mission, their past experience, alongside links to personal content.
The Actresses
Read moving interviews with some of these courageous women as they tell us about their new lives and what they miss about home.
“In truth the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ has no end, because everything which happens in it must extend into life… The ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ is located precisely on the frontier between fiction and reality - and this border must be crossed. If the show starts in fiction, its objective is to become integrated into reality, into life.”