Cotton Queen

Fiction

About the film

Director: Suzannah Mirghani
Country: Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan
Year: 2025
Duration: 94 min
Language:
Subtitles: English

Screening in collaboration with Ubuntu Malmö Filmfestival

Panel discussion after the film about the role of the transatlantic slave trade in cotton production, Malmö’s colonial legacy, women’s experiences and the textile industry of today.

Participants:

Malcolm Jallow, Chairman of Panafrican movement for Justice

Norah Dexborg, Student, activist and organizer with a focus on Afrophobia and intersectional feminism.

Pål Brunnström, researcher and teacher at the Department of Urban Studies, and director of the Institute for Studies in Malmö History (IMH). Pål is currently researching the Swedish cotton textile industry and its links to colonialism and is the editor of a recently published anthology on the subject, Weaving it together.

Synopsis

ENGLISH

In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonizers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the center of a power play to determine the future of the village. Awakening to her own strength, Nafisa sets out to save the cotton fields – and herself. Neither she nor her community will ever be the same again.

SVENSKA

I ett hus i 1980-talets Mexiko kämpar sju kvinnor från olika generationer för att rädda sitt gemensamma hem, som hotas av försäljning. Allt skildras genom åttaåriga Robertas ögon, vars blick fångar både vardagens kamp och barndomens magi. »Vanilla«, inspirerad av regissören Mayra Hermosillos egen uppväxt, är ett poetiskt och varmt kärleksbrev till de kvinnor som format henne. En rörande berättelse om familj och tillhörighet – där barndomens lekfullhet kolliderar med vuxenvärldens allvar.

Director’s Bio

Suzannah Mirghani

Suzannah Mirghani is a Sudanese-Russian filmmaker and editor at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her short film Al-Sit (2020) is on Netflix Middle East and won the Canal+ Award at Clermont-Ferrand, among other prizes. Her recent shorts include Virtual Voice (2021) and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness (2022), commissioned by Serpentine Galleries.
Cotton Queen (2025) won the ArteKino Award at L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, and is Suzannah’s first feature film.