Aliaa Magda Elmahdy

The Arab revolutions swept away the old regimes and were led by young modern people, invested with a global culture, internet, huge frustration, and a need for freedom and emancipation. Women played a major role in the revolutions. Some even became icons. Women are becoming the front line in a clash between secularism and traditionalism. Frenzy and sexual violence; taboos and prohibitions; constant stimulation on internet and TV... How will the Islamists handle this explosive cocktail?

Threatened with death in Egypt by religious fanatics, chased away by revolutionaries in Cairo's Tahrir Square, challenged by some Egyptian feminists, abandoned by her own friends, 20-year-old Aliaa Magda Elmahdy had no choice. She had to flee Egypt to survive. She sought refuge in Sweden, where the filmmakers found her. Her crime? Posing nude on her blog to denounce the hypocrisy surrounding women's bodies in the Arab world. A rather ordinary photo, in fact. She says she took the photo herself, with her own camera. Without influence. For her, it was an act of activism. That of a woman who embraces her sexuality in a macho world where the birth of a boy is a day of celebration and that of a girl is a nakba, a day of disaster.