Q review – freedom, lies and transgressions in emotional fallout from a secretive Muslim women’s...Q中的秘密、謊言與解放

Film-maker Jude Chehab has unveiled a deeply personal documentary that chronicles the emotional fallout her family endured after her mother's expulsion from al-Qubaysiat.

This secretive movement, an all-female Muslim order operating across Lebanon and Syria, had shaped three generations of women in Chehab's family.

The documentary, titled Q, functions simultaneously as an investigative piece and a form of intergenerational therapy.

For decades, Chehab's mother Hiba devoted herself to al-Qubaysiat, which demanded absolute submission to its leader, known as the Anisa.

Chehab's grandmother Doria had likewise been a committed follower, and Chehab herself was initiated into the group as a child.

Both older women reportedly experienced profound feelings of solidarity and liberation within this all-female religious community.

When Hiba was expelled for unclear transgressions, her entire world unravelled, leaving the family to grapple with grief, confusion, and betrayal.

Unlike other documentaries about controversial organisations, Chehab's film deliberately avoids sensationalising tactics of indoctrination.

Instead, information about the group emerges only in fragments, as revealed gradually by Hiba and Doria in intimate conversations.

This narrative approach shifts attention away from the unseen but powerful Anisa and toward the emotional maelstrom endured by Hiba's family.

Chehab had envisaged her camera as a potent tool for catharsis, yet her father's responses proved less scathing than she had anticipated.

It was as though he were following an imaginary script that had gone awry, complicating Chehab's original vision for the film.

Crucially, Hiba does not conform to simplistic expectations of a victim, which lends the documentary its remarkable depth.

Her wounds from banishment remain raw, yet she resists easy categorisation as either a passive sufferer or a defiant survivor.

By refusing to impose a tidy narrative on such messy realities, Chehab has crafted a film that resonates as an honest exploration of freedom, belonging, and slow liberation.