The 9th WFFIS presents this section Empire and Women to speculate on the specific aspects of women's lives either forcibly or actively related to the globalization and the neoliberalism in the global/local context. Today, the power of the Empire which has newly emerged with the economic, military, and political predominance conditions the ordinary lives, labors, health, and souls of women in collusion with the local powers. It is the phallo-centric and patriarchal ideologies that support these powers. Women are oppressed by the local wars and terrors, exploitation, low wages and environmental contamination by multinational corporations. However, they fight against those powers and sometimes they open the feminist-political space. This section introduces films which record the oppressive and contradictory moments where those empires and women encounter and speculate on them.

Baghdad Days and My Home – Your War recorded the Iraq War from the women's point of view. These films, where women depicted the 'life in war'¡¯ in the way of self-representation with the camera, vividly show how meaningless wars caused by the empires left wounds on women trying to lead the subjective life and their families.
View from a Grain of Sand and Enemies of Happiness are documentaries about Afghanistan which is another battle field. View from a Grain of Sand by Meena Nanji discloses how close the war is connected to the male-centric relationship between the empire and the local. At the same time, it describes how these political changes intruded by the power of empire slow down the women's movement in Afghanistan. Enemies of Happiness follows Malalai Joya, acclaimed to be the most famous woman in Afghanistan by BBC, while she was running for the first general election after the war. She won the election as the youngest parliament member protesting 'liberation and freedom of women' and now opens the space for the feminist practices in this oppressive society.