Barbara Wally has been known throughout Austria for her outspoken feminist views for decades. But a few years before retiring from the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts in Salzburg, her life took a drastic turn.
During a 10-day vacation to Yemen, she fell in love with a chauffeur named Khadher and became his second wife. "In every conversation, it was imperative that I become Muslim", she explains. "He doesn't want me to end up in hell."
So this atheist Austrian converts to Islam, prays five times a day, and says goodbye to her beloved bacon. Directing duo Andreas Horvath and Monika Muskala pay her a visit in both Salzburg and Yemen.
The heavyset woman with long, dyed red hair is a striking presence in the latter country. Together with her husband, she runs a local travel agency called Adensafari. But while her spouse spends his days slumped in his chair chewing qat or drinking tea with male relatives, Barbara can barely leave the house - a highlight of her daily routine is a game of dominos.
Arab Attraction is a remarkable portrait of a special woman who has drastically revised her point of view and now questions post-feminist Western society.
Her switch to a subservient existence seems almost masochistic, or is Barbara just looking for peace and security in her new faith?
Örökmozgó, half past 6, Erzsébet krt.39. Budapest.
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