Rania Stephan

Egyptian cinema of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s—as embodied by one of its biggest stars of the era—is the subject of Stephan's video The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni, which receives its U.S. museum debut here. The work is a montage of clips appropriated from more than 60 VHS copies of the various films featuring Soad Hosni (1943–2001), the Levantine screen siren who is believed to have ended her life in suicide. In the piece, Stephan, who was born in Lebanon, revisits a lost era of filmmaking, while also exploring the complex image of women in the Arab world.