Artist and filmmaker Rania Stepha’s work is anchored in her country's turbulent reality, offering a personal lens on political events. Her short films and creative documentaries intertwine raw images with a poetic touch, where chance encounters are captured with compassion and humour. She consistently delves into archival materials, exploring forgotten images and haunting sounds that persist in the present. Her work explores how still and moving images collide and collude, multiply and subtract. Approaching images like an editor–part detective, part cinephile, her work traces absence and remembrance. Stephan’s debut feature film, The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni tells the story of Soad Hosni, one of Egypt’s most famous actresses, who starred in eighty-two feature films between 1959 and 1991. Using filmic montage, Stephan creates a moving portrait of the iconic actress, in which the rumours surrounding her life and death are translated through her image as a projection of the Arab imaginary and its evolution over thirty years.