Safaa Fathy’s enchanting documentary film Dardasha Socotra presents the Yemeni island of Socotra through a series of conversations (or "dardasha" in Arabic) with its inhabitants. With one-third of the island's plant life found nowhere else on the planet, Socotra is a member of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves and has been described as the most alien-looking place on Earth.

The people of Socotra give surprising insights into their relationship with nature and with each other, into the island's language, history, legends, and the many changes that have taken place on the island throughout the years.

The conversations presented in the film are by turns funny, moving, and poetic. Traditional documentary form and the roles of filmmaker and subject are abandoned as director Safaa Fathy unearths as many new questions as she answers while exploring the fascinating and remote island of Socotra with the people who are living there.

This film is available with a Digital Site License (DSL), which allows colleges, universities, or libraries to encode, locally host, and stream the film to their community on a closed, password-protected system.

Rental Information
This film is available from AFD for public screenings and television broadcast. For information regarding rental rates and formats, please contact [email protected] for institutional/non-theatrical screenings, or [email protected] for theatrical, festival, television, or other bookings.