Roll Tide, but make it hijabi — these students are rewriting the Deep South one scarf at a time.
When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?
Direction
Raimist lets subjects speak, never performs their trauma for you.
Production
Shot where it matters — Bama's actual campus, not a soundstage.
Director
Rachel Raimist
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released in 2015, this predates the 2016 election and its surge in Islamophobic incidents — making it a pre-storm document of quieter hostilities.
Director Rachel Raimist is a Bama professor, not an outsider — this is insider ethnography with institutional access most documentarians never get.
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