Ateyyat El Abnoudy, also called ‘the mother of Egyptian documentary’, started making films as a student in the early 1970s, and has had a prolific and relatively successful career as a documentarian in the Arab world. Her films have been exhibited at festivals worldwide, on television in Europe and the Arab world, and at special screenings of retrospectives of her work, though not in Egypt itself. Her most successful and internationally recognised film is Days of Democracy (1996), and she continued making films until 2006, when she became ill. In this chapter I offer an overview of the consequences of censorship for under-represented documentaries in Egypt and discuss El Abnoudy's exploration of voices and faces in some of her most significant documentary films. Particular attention is paid to her first three short documentaries Horse of Mud (1971), Sad Song of Touha (1972) and The Sandwich (1975), as well as Permissible Dreams (1982) and Responsible Women (1994). The issue of who speaks or who looks at the Egyptian women and children from the lower classes comes to the forefront. In her later and most famous film, Days of Democracy (1996), El Abnoudy becomes more self-conscious and reflexive in capturing women's voices and faces. The Al Jazeera documentary, Days of Documentary, about El Abnoudy (and not to be confused with her own Days of Democracy) is used as an important resource, as – apart from the occasional newspaper article – almost no material exists regarding her films.

El Abnoudy was born in 1939 and grew up in rural El Simbelaween, Daqahlia Governorate, on the north of the Delta. She grew up in a working-class society and grabbed the Nasserist opportunity to attend the University of Cairo to study law (pers. correspondence, 2009). In Cairo she moved in artistic and journalistic circles, mainly because of her relationship with her first husband, the journalist and poet Abdel-Rahman El Abnoudy (who died in 2015). During her studies she supported herself financially by working in a theatre and as an actress. This interest in law, political journalism and art, combined with her involvement in acting, awakened in her a social awareness of class and wealth, an interest in socialism and Marxism, and a curiosity about theatre and film.