The Chancellor’s Arts & Culture Initiative hosted a screening of “Ojalá Supieras” (“I Wish You Knew”) at the Anteater Learning Pavilion (ALP), drawing a crowd of 110 students, faculty and community members on Feb. 3.
The event was co-sponsored by UCI Illuminations, UCI’s Latinx Resource Center, the UCI Law School, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies, the Department of Chicano/Latino studies, the Department of Film and Media Studies, the Department of Global and International Studies, and the Arabic language and culture club. Cham-Ya and LK Cookies provided food and dessert for the event.
UCI Arabic lecturer and Arabic language and culture club advisor Raheela Maniar, one of the event’s main organizers, said her personal connection to the director and the film’s relationship to Arabic motivated her to organize a film screening at UCI.
“We’re trying to expand the narrative around Arabic, what people think about Arabic and Arabic culture,” Maniar told New University. “And this movie shares an authentic story from [the director’s] perspective. It’s a rare opportunity for someone who speaks Arabic, who is Muslim, to share their view of a story that’s personal to them.”
“Ojalá Supieras” reveals the hidden history of Islam in colonial Mexico through thousands of archival documents, reframing the country as not solely a Christian nation, but one forged by Muslim, Jewish and Indigenous peoples.
Director, researcher and producer of “Ojalá Supieras” Dr. Mariam Saada worked on the film for almost three years before its release on Nov. 15, 2025. Saada was inspired to provide a platform to Latino Muslims who were previously unknown, from the original Muslim ban in the early 16th century to today.
“This is a group of people that I found in archives and nobody knows anything about them,” Saada told New University. “And I felt like, to do enough justice to what happened to them and what they went through and their lives, I have to show it.”
The screening began with remarks from Maniar and Associate Professor of Media Studies Dr. Desha Dauchan, followed by comments from Saada and her husband Associate Producer Levent Akbarut.
“How is it possible that you could read [Arabic], write it, speak it and understand it in Spain for all these years and [yet] today, the language died,” Saada told the audience. “How do you kill a language?”
After the screening of the 70-minute documentary, audience members had the opportunity to ask Saada questions. During the discussion, an audience member asked about a scene in which Saada discovered Quranic chapters in the archives, and what emotions she felt after that moment.
“The question is not how, the question is why it’s there? The value of this document is it actually unlocked the keywords that I needed to find all the other documents,” Saada said.
Another audience member wanted to know what challenges Saada faced while producing the film.
“You want honesty?” Saada said. “Funding. I stopped the research because the funding ended. That’s just [the] bottom line.”
Third-year biological sciences major and Vice President of the Arabic language and culture club Ameera Alkwadri said she hopes the screening sparks dialogue among students.
“I hope this opens new conversations between people to hopefully break down barriers, to not be as shy, to learn new things about new people,” Alkwadri told New University. “And hopefully this opens new conversations to learn more about each other’s cultures so that we can grow as one community, especially in the Islamic community, so there’s not as much divide.”
The next screening of “Ojalá Supieras” will take place at UC Berkeley on Feb. 14.
Ennes Kahf is a Features Staff Writer. He can be reached at ekahf@uci.edu.
Edited by Avery Rosas