An intimate preview screening of ‘Treat Me Like Your Mother’ by Mohamad Abdouni
Tuesday 13 Oct 2026 from 7:30pm to 10:30pm
Free on booking
Film in Arabic, with English and French subtitles. 76 mins
An intimate preview screening of Treat Me Like Your Mother, the first feature-length documentary by the Lebanese artist, photographer and filmmaker Mohamad Abdouni.
The result of archival research begun in 2019, the film gives a voice to four Lebanese trans women – Em Abed, Jamal Abdo, Antonella and Mama Jad – and traces their journeys as well as the largely unknown history of the trans community in Beirut.
From the first gender-affirming surgery supported by the Lebanese state in 1997 to the gradual disappearance of safe spaces, the film weaves an intimate and collective narrative, exploring memory, transmission and resistance. Following its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Treat Me Like Your Mother was selected for BFI Flare, the Lux Film Fest and ALFILM Berlin, screened as the opening film at the Queer Spectrum Film Festival in Dublin, and presented by the Fondation Cartier in Venice as part of the Cinema of Inclusion programme.
Blending photographs, personal archives, home videos and testimonies, Treat Me Like Your Mother continues Mohamad Abdouni’s long-term project dedicated to the forgotten queer histories of Beirut and the Arabic-speaking world. Since 2019, the artist has been compiling an archive of trans* histories in Lebanon, now held at the Arab Image Foundation. The screening will be followed by a book signing by the artist at La Librairie, as well as a DJ set by Jana Saleh.
This screening echoes the work of Mohamad Abdouni, which was presented at the Fondation in October 2024 as part of the ‘Soft Skills’ exhibition, following the Lafayette Anticipations Production Support Prize awarded to one of the artists from the Emerging Galleries section of Art Basel Paris 2023.
His work has been exhibited namely at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the FOAM Gallery in Amsterdam, L’Institut du Monde Arab, Art Basel by Paris+ and the Institute of Islamic Cultures in Paris, Patel Brown in Toronto, and the Lyon Biennale amongst others.
Mohamad’s films have been screened and awarded at festivals such as Eyes Wide Open and the Leeds Queer Film Festival in the UK, IQMF in Amsterdam, The Brooklyn Museum and Woodbury LGBTQ Film Festival in the US, and Pink Apple Schwullesbisches Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in Switzerland to name a few.
Commercially, he has shot for and directed narrative fashion films and music videos with the likes of Gucci, Vogue US, Vogue Italia, Burberry, Puma, The New York Times, Slate, Fendi, Farfetch, GQ, King Kong, Dazed, Another, Nowness, Vice UK and L’officiel.
His personal endeavors tend to focus on the untold stories of Beirut and uncovering the rich yet eradicated queer histories of the Arab-speaking region through several documentaries and photo stories that have been featured in publications from A24, Telerama, Foam Magazine, Tetu, New Queer Photography, Kaleidoscope, i-D, Photoworks, The Guardian, Facebook and more.
As of 2019, he has dedicated his time to working on what is arguably the first archive of trans* histories in an Arab country, a project entitled Treat Me Like Your Mother: Trans* Histories From Beirut’s Forgotten Past. The collection resides safely today at the Arab Image Foundation.
Recently, he’s been working on a long-term project that delves deeper into the town he grew up in, in the Bekaa of Lebanon bordering with Syria, presenting questions around the ideals of masculinity that he was meant to embody, and the strains that such expectations can have on interfamilial relationships.