The Tainted Veil, directed by Nahla Al Fahad, Mazen al Khayrat and Ovidio Salazar, offers many different perspectives from around the world about the hijab, a headscarf that Muslim women traditionally wear. There's more to the hijab than meets the eye, and there's a lot of grey area about its significance depending on whom you ask. Some Muslim women refuse to wear it while others chose to wear it or are forced to wear it. The directors allow a broad range of people to share their views on the hijab, i.e. students and imams. You'll learn, briefly, about the origins of hijabs and about the different opinions about them, so in terms of insight, The Tainted Veil does at least enlighten to a certain degree. It does suffer from what some documentaries suffer from which is excessive talking heads without enough analysis or probing of what's being said. It would have been engaging on an emotional level if the audience were to get to know some of the subjects more instead of just hear them taking about hijabs. As a result, the doc feel a bit pedestrian and more like something you'd watch in a history class rather than in the cinema. Nonetheless, it's still a timely doc that opens up a lot of issues, i.e. the oppression of women, for discussion after the movie. You'll never look at a hijab the same way again. Anasy Media opens The Tainted Veil at Cinema Village.

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