Muna is a dominatrix whose daily life comes down to sex and getting high. But as a Muslim she is going through a spiritual crisis and her reflections lead her to question the idea of submission from a religious, psychological and sexual perspective. In order to reconcile her excessive lifestyle with her Islamic origins, Muna aspires to give her soul to a jinn, the Muslim equivalent of a demon. According to the Qur’an, these demons are as good as they are bad, and it is said that each of us has one.
Shot in an almost documentary style, this purely transgressive film offers a radical immersion into its main character’s life; thus Usama Alshaibi stirs all the consequences of a cultural clash that may be quite destabilizing. Confronting a world of poisonous erotic tradition with Islamic mythology, the film reflects the torments arising from the seductive power of both sides and illustrates their consequences and impacts on one’s identity.
Usama Alshaibi was born in Baghdad in 1969. His education was split between the U.S. and the Middle East. Since the late 1990s, he has produced some forty shorts, going from trash experimentations to documentaries, a dozen music videos and the drama feature film Muhammad and Jane (2002) as well as Nice Bombs (2004), a documentary filmed in Iraq and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. He is currently working on his new documentary, American Arab.