Leil Zahra
Mortada

Leil-Zahra Mortada is a transfeminist queer activist and filmmaker, born in Beirut and based between Berlin and Beirut.
Their work has a major focus on gender, sexualities, documentation (and self-documentation), freedom of movement, protest movements,  freedom of expression, and post-colonialism. They have helped found various groups that crossed a milestone in the respective countries; such as Helem (the first official LGBTIQ organization in Lebanon), and OpAntiSH (a grassroots network to combat mob sexual assaults in Egypt). Leil has participated in various documentation projects around human rights and social justice mainly in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, in post-war Iraq, and most notably in their "Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution" - a video-archive documenting the participation of women in the Jan25 revolution.