Let Her Sing 2026: Film Screenings

Middle Eastern composer Sara Najafi sets out to accomplish something that has become extraordinarily difficult in the Middle East: organize a public concert featuring women singing solo. Determined to revive a musical tradition pushed from public life, she brings together Middle Eastern and French women musicians for a concert in Tehran.

Director Ayat Najafi follows the project over more than two years as Sara navigates government bureaucracy, censorship, cultural restrictions, and uncertainty over whether the performance will ever be permitted to take place. Part musical journey and part chronicle of resistance, it asks what happens when a society restricts the female voice.

Filmed over seven years, A Sister's Tale is director Leila Amini's deeply personal portrait of her sister, Nasreen, a mother of two living in Tehran who begins to reclaim a dream she had long put aside: becoming a singer.

After years devoted to marriage and family, Nasreen becomes determined to pursue music despite opposition within her marriage and the restrictions placed on women singing publicly in the Middle East. What begins as the story of one woman finding her voice becomes a moving examination of family, marriage, motherhood, and female self-determination.

Sonita follows a spirited young Afghan refugee living in Tehran who dreams of becoming a rapper. While she writes songs inspired by artists she admires and imagines a future in music, her family has other plans: they intend to marry her off in exchange for money.

Living in a country where women face restrictions on singing publicly, Sonita turns to rap as a way to tell her own story and challenge the forces trying to determine her future. At once intimate and urgent, it is a portrait of a young woman discovering that her voice can become one of her most powerful tools for freedom.