The Light in Her Eyes | American Documentary

The Light in Her Eyes

POV Season 25

Feature Film
2012
60 Mins

Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur'an school for girls in Damascus, Syria, 30 years ago. Every summer, her female students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is underway — women are claiming space within the mosque. Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, The Light in Her Eyes offers an extraordinary portrait of a leader who challenges the women of her community to live according to Islam, without giving up their dreams. An Official Selection of the 2011 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Produced in association with American Documentary | POV.

Survivors

Feature Film
2018

Clip

Through the eyes of Sierra Leonean filmmaker Arthur Pratt, Survivors presents an intimate portrait of his country during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the sociopolitical turmoil that lies in its wake. During one of the ...

93Queen

Feature Film
2018

Interview

Set in the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, 93Queen follows a group of tenacious Hasidic women who are smashing the patriarchy in their community by creating the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City. With unprecedented and ...

Still Tomorrow

Feature Film
2018

Interview

A village woman with no high school diploma becomes China's most famous poet, and her book of poetry the best-selling such volume in China in the past 20 years. Still Tomorrow follows Yu Xiuhua, a 39-year-old woman living with cerebral ...

Whose Streets?

Feature Film
2018

Clip

When unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street for hours, it marks a breaking point for the residents of the St. Louis area and beyond. Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the ...

The War to Be Her

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

In Waziristan, "one of the most dangerous places on earth", Maria Toorpakai defies the Taliban, disguising herself as a boy so she can play sports freely. But when she becomes a rising star, her true identity is revealed and death ...

StoryCorps Shorts: The Temple of Knowledge

Short Film
2018

Short Film

Ronald Clark's father was a custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library ...

A Conversation with My Black Son

Short Film
2018

Short Film

For generations, parents of black boys across the U.S. have rehearsed, dreaded and postponed The Conversation. But when their boys become teenagers, parents must decide how to handle discussions about race. In this short film originally published by The ...

Mother's Day

Short Film
2018

Short Film

Once a year on Mother's Day, a charity bus service takes children to visit their mothers in prison across California. Nearly one in ten of the state's children have a parent in prison. Many are unable to regularly visit their ...

StoryCorps Shorts: Driven

Short Film
2016

Short Film

Wendell Scott was the first African American inducted in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. His son, Frank, remembers what it took for his father to cross the finish line at racetracks throughout the South in the '60s and '70s.

From Damascus to Chicago

Short Film
2017

Short Film

In the documentary short From Damascus to Chicago, two young Syrian siblings recently resettled in Chicago enroll in a dance class, while the film follows their family's experiences in navigating a new city and country.

Graven Image

Short Film
2018

Short Film

Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument: Georgia’s Stone Mountain.

The Changing Same

Short Film
2019

Short Film

In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where resident and poet L. Lamar Wilson runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history. A co-presentation ...

Stay Close

Short Film
2019

Short Film

Stay Close blends home videos and animation in an expressionistic montage to tell the underdog story of Keeth Smart, an African American fencer from Brooklyn who overcomes a gauntlet of hardships on his road to the Olympics.

Edgecombe

Short Film
2020

Short Film

Through the deeply personal truths of three local residents, Edgecombe examines the ways trauma repeats and reinvents itself in rural black communities.

Reluctantly Queer

Short Film
2020

Short Film

A young gay man from Ghana struggles to reconcile his sexuality and love for his mother through a series of letters in this deceptively simple yet powerful piece.

Gentlemen of Vision

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Gentlemen of Vision follows a year in the life of coach, counselor and founder Marlon Wharton, and his 2015-2016 class of young Black males as he strives to rewrite future prospects for his students. While striving for excellence in school ...

For Ahkeem

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Expelled from high school, Daje Shelton is only 17 years old when she is sentenced by a judge – not to prison, but to an alternative school, the Innovative Concept Academy. It offers Daje one last chance to earn a high ...

Agents of Change

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Agents of Change examines the racial conditions on college campuses across the U.S. in the late 1960’s, focusing on student demands at two seminal protests: San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969. Many of the ...

100 Years

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

100 Years: One Woman's Fight for Justice is the compelling story of Elouise Cobell, a petite Blackfeet warrior from Montana, the great granddaughter of the legendary, Mountain Chief. As an advocate for Native American financial self-determination and independence, she conducted ...

MILWAUKEE 53206

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

MILWAUKEE 53206 introduces viewers to a community with the highest rate of incarcerated African American men in the U.S. The unvarnished film unfolds through the stories of postal code 53206 residents directly impacted by imprisonment: Beverly Walker and her ...

Race/Related

Interactive
2016

Clip

In 2016 POV partnered with The New York Times on the "embedded mediamaker" project, in which three filmmakers fluent in digital media spent several months working at the Times, creating interactive video projects about race and ethnicity. The work was ...

Snapchat Films

Interactive
2016

In 2016, POV produced the first independent films ever for Snapchat Discover, distributed in partnership with the short-form digital content creator NowThis. In Lizzie Jacobs' We'll Still Be Here, dominoes players keep their beloved game alive while a neighborhood changes ...

Whiteness Project

Interactive
2014

Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race. Whiteness Project conducts interviews with people from all walks of life and localities in which they are asked about ...

Empire

Interactive
2014

The Dutch East and West India Companies once controlled vast trading networks that stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to the Indonesian archipelago, and from New York to South America's Wild Coast. Although they came in pursuit of short-term ...

Fukushima

Interactive
2014

A chronicle the ongoing recovery of the Tohoku region of Japan after the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011.Set three years after the calamitous meltdown, Fukushima: The Eternal Season, creates an impassioned portrait of a resident as ...

Film Credits

Laura Nix
Julia Meltzer

Press Room

‘POV’ and ‘America ReFramed’ host the 2024 Wyncote Fellows at PBS Annual Meeting POV’s While We Watched Receives a Peabody Awards Nomination America ReFramed Acquires the Compelling Documentary A Woman on the Outside to Open WORLD’s Newest Content Theme “Liberated Lives” Beginning March 28, 2024

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