Layla, Layli and her Possible Dreams

During the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran, I meet an Iranian dissident online while I am in Lebanon, my home country. Over a year of conversations, I fall in love with him—and with the image of the revolutionary he embodies. When we finally meet, the image shatters: in his struggle, there is no room for love.
From this impossibility begins a journey across the Middle East. Through encounters with women in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon,
Layla, Layli and Her Possible Dreams revisits the ancient legend of Layla and Majnun, questioning the imagination of love these myths have shaped—and their validity today. Layla in Arabic, Layli in Persian, means “feminine night.” In this night, a shared struggle connects us, and the film becomes the space of our encounter.

Maria, born in Beirut in 1982, is a filmmaker and artist whose practice evolved from documentary theatre to film and photography. Her work explores ways of moving beyond the narratives and archives of power, gathering alternative stories through encounters and voices collected during her journeys across the Middle East.
Filmed in Lebanon, her first documentary, Tempo Fragile, draws on the biblical figure of the woman turned into a pillar of salt to reflect on judgment, faith, and obedience in a region long scarred by sectarian massacres.