Negotiating Dissidence traces the very beginnings of Arab women making documentaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt and Lebanon, to the 1990s and 2000s in Morocco and Syria. Supporting a historical overview of the documentary form in the Arab world with a series of in-depth case studies, Stefanie Van de Peer looks at the work of pioneering figures like Ateyyat El Abnoudy, the 'mother of Egyptian documentary', Tunisia's Selma Baccar and the Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri.