WOMENATRIX · Case Study | AZRI Creative Studio

WOM ENA TRI X..

AI Film Documentary MENA

A multi-format feminist intervention against technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
AI short film · forensic documentary · research articles · survival guide.

Components 4 Formats

Region MENA

Production 100% AI-Generated

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01. Prologue

The research existed.
Nobody was watching it.

60% of women in the MENA region have experienced technology-facilitated gender-based violence. The data was published. The papers were filed. Nothing changed. WOMENATRIX turns evidence into cinema. making the invisible crisis impossible to ignore.

Salima in her kitchen — The facade. ordinary life

Salima screaming in red void — The rupture. red world

Masks surrounding subject — Identity erasure

Red server environment — Inside the machine

Hand interacting with data — Reclaiming the tools

Resistance. glowing hands — Collective resistance

Women at sea in traditional robes — Cultural reclamation

Salima with cyan lamp — The survivor's light

0 Components

0 AI-Generated

0 Visual Created

0 Total Plays

Red Chaos

Cyan Evidence

Films

A 4-minute AI short film and a 9-minute forensic documentary. Two genres, one argument. red chaos to cyan evidence.

Short Film + Documentary

Research Articles

Two peer-level articles. sociological and economic analysis of digital violence. Available in Arabic and English.

Arabic + English

Survival Guide

A 24-page Arabic-first survival guide with three pillars: Panic Button, Shield, and Recovery. Distributed peer-to-peer.

24 Pages · Arabic-First

Short Film

Documentary

02. The Studio Challenge

Visualize policy.
Protect the subjects.

We received dense research, raw data, and a mandate: turn invisible violence into cinema nobody could look away from. The content existed. our job was to architect the visual language that would make it land. Four interconnected design and technical obstacles defined the brief.

01 Ethical Constraint

The Anonymity Constraint

Generate visceral digital violence sequences without exposing a single real woman to the camera. Every frame needed to hit like a documentary. but no survivor could be identifiable. This wasn't a creative limitation; it was the entire design premise.

02 Translation

The Academic Bridge

Take dense sociological and economic research texts. peer-reviewed, citation-heavy, written for journals. and translate them into an emotional, cinematic visual language that a general audience would feel before they understood.

03 Cultural Design

The Cultural Register

Design a visual identity explicitly for the MENA region, actively avoiding the aesthetic of Western-funded trauma documentaries. Arabic as a co-equal visual language, not a subtitle. North African colour sensibility, not NGO blue.

04 Information Design

Information Architecture

Transform heavy cybersecurity protocols and digital safety manuals into an accessible, urgent experience. a survival guide that reads like a visual triage map, not a policy document.

03. The Threat

Violence as a
design outcome.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is not a glitch. it is an architecture. The platforms, algorithms, and interfaces were built in ways that make abuse predictable, scalable, and invisible.

Opening

في عالمٍ رقمي يتسع بلا حدود، لا تزال النساء يواجهن عنفاً يتخفّى خلف الشاشات

"In an endlessly expanding digital world, women still face violence hiding behind screens."

→

The Rupture

العنف الرقمي ليس مجرّد تعليقات مؤذية... إنّه منظومة كاملة تهدف إلى إسكات النساء

"Digital violence is not just hurtful comments… it is an entire system designed to silence women."

MENA regional map showing violence spread — 60% of women in MENA experienced digital violence Arabesque 2024

Data HUD with statistics — 6/10 women in Tunisia have suffered from harassment and threats Arabesque

Facebook monolith platform — 91% on Facebook, the dominant platform SMEX 2024

Deepfake projection — 99% of deepfake pornography targets women Sensity AI

Facial recognition bias — 35% facial recognition error rate for dark skinned women MIT Media Lab

Eye-shaped surveillance monitors — Surveillance as architecture

Floating mobile screens — The panopticon goes mobile

Political smear campaign — 80% of female political candidates in Kenya faced online smear campaigns NDII 2022

Election manipulation — 2× UK doubled AI-generated exploitation material UK Gov 2025

Code matrix surrounding figure — Code as cage

◈

Sociological Lens

Digital Extends Offline Patriarchy

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is not a new phenomenon. it is the old violence wearing a new mask. Digital platforms amplify existing power structures, making harassment scalable, anonymous, and persistent.

"The digital space doesn't create patriarchy. it industrialises it."

◈

Economic Lens

The Competence Penalty

When women use AI tools successfully, they face a credibility tax. Their competence is attributed to the machine, not the person. The same tools that promise liberation become instruments of professional erasure.

"She didn't do the work. the AI did it for her."

The Aesthetic Shield

We used AI to protect the people AI was harming. Every character is synthetic. Every statistic is real. The medium is the argument.

04. The Shield

AI as protection,
not just production.

No real women were filmed. No faces were exposed. AI generated every frame. not as a shortcut, but as a deliberate act of protection. The subjects of digital violence are rendered by algorithms; making the film with AI is the argument, not the aesthetic.

Protection

AI-generated characters shield real survivors from further exposure. No consent dilemmas, no re-traumatisation, no identifiable faces in a film about digital violence.

Medium = Argument

The subjects of digital violence are rendered by algorithms. Making the film with AI literalises the crisis. the tool of harm becomes the tool of testimony.

Visual Consistency

Cinematic quality maintained across both films. A unified image-to-video pipeline ensured visual continuity. consistent characters, colour discipline, and emotional register from first frame to last.

Creative Decisions

01 Survivor Protection

No Real Women

Every character in both films is AI-generated. This was not a budget decision. it was an ethical one. In a film about digital violence, using real faces would reproduce the very harm the project documents.

02 Narrative

Character Before Statistic

Salima is not an illustration of a dataset. She is a researcher who built her own surveillance cage. a composite character whose arc makes the statistics personal before they become political.

Salima's breakdown. character as vessel

Into the void

03 The Twist

She Built the Cage

Salima won "Innovator of the Year" for the platform that enabled her own harassment. The system she built for others became the architecture of her surveillance. This is the central irony. technology as both liberation and trap.

"Innovator of the Year". for the platform that surveilled her.

04 Visual Language

Abstraction as Argument

Glitch, fragmentation, and distortion are not stylistic choices. they are arguments. When a face pixelates, it visualises the erasure that digital violence performs. The aesthetic IS the thesis.

Abstract dark space with cyan UI — Cyan abstraction

Woman constrained by wires — Digital constraint

Production Pipeline

From research to screen, a complete production workflow.

4 formats. Every phase was deliberate.

Research & Writing

Deep dive into technology facilitated gender based violence. Verified statistics from peer reviewed sources. Bilingual narration scripted in Arabic with English integration.

Foundation

Art Direction & Branding

Complete visual identity defined before any frame was generated. Colour system, typographic rules, logo, poster hierarchy. The brand was the blueprint.

Identity System

Image Generation

Consistent AI generated characters with strict visual continuity. Scene composition, colour discipline, and emotional register calibrated frame by frame.

Character & Scene

Video Generation

Animated generated images into motion sequences. Base animation for standard scenes, high fidelity generation for hero sequences requiring cinematic precision.

Motion & Sequence

Voice Production

Arabic narration generated using AI voice synthesis. A voice so authentically human that audiences felt an immediate emotional connection with the data heavy content.

AI Narration

Post Production

Compositing, colour grading, and brand integration across all formats. Data overlays, HUD elements, and bilingual typography layered into the forensic register.

Compositing & Grading

Distribution

Multi platform premiere strategy. Film releases, social campaign rollout, and peer to peer survival guide distribution through trusted community networks.

Multi Platform

05. The Film

Frame by frame.
Every image is an argument.

ACT I

The Short Film, Red Register

4 minutes of psychological horror. Salima’s world collapses in red. the colour of alarm, rupture, and the system seen from inside.

ACT II

The Documentary, Cyan Register

9 minutes of forensic evidence. The documentary begins where the short film ends. replacing visceral chaos with systematic proof.

Facebook monolith — Platform as architecture

Silhouette against red door — The threshold

Red corridor figure — Standing in the system

Woman with Arabic text — Arabic first register

Technological headset — Technological constraint

Distorted AI features — Identity distortion

Surveillance monitors — Surveillance perspective

ACT IV

The Other Side: Resistance + Agency

The documentary shifts register. From evidence to agency: solutions, resistance, the tools women are building for themselves.

Data connectivity — Connectivity spreading

Resistance formation — Building resistance

Credits approach — Approaching the credits

Hand with data — Reclaiming the architecture

"She won Innovator of the Year. for the platform that enabled her own harassment."

The central irony of WOMENATRIX

06. Research

Knowledge production as
feminist advocacy.

Two peer-level research articles anchor the project's intellectual framework. One sociological, one economic. together they map the full terrain of technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

EN + AR Economic Analysis

Code or Be Coded

An economic analysis of the "Competence Penalty". what happens when women use AI tools successfully and face a credibility tax. The same tools that promise liberation become instruments of professional erasure.

AR + EN Sociological Analysis

الفضاء الرقمي بين الهيمنة الذكورية والنضال النسوي

Digital space between male dominance and feminist struggle. A sociological mapping of how digital platforms extend offline patriarchy. amplifying existing power structures into scalable systems of control.

07. The Tactical Tool

Designing for a
digital emergency.

The survival guide content was provided by the research team. 24 pages of cybersecurity protocols, legal resources, and crisis response procedures in Arabic. Dense, vital, and completely unreadable in its raw form. Our design intervention transformed a text-heavy document into a visual triage map that could be used under pressure.

⚡

Panic Button

Immediate crisis response. What to do in the first 60 seconds when digital violence strikes. account lockdowns, evidence preservation, emergency contacts.

Crisis Protocol

🛡

Shield

Preventive security architecture. Two-factor authentication flows, privacy audits, platform-specific hardening. designed as visual checklists, not paragraphs.

Prevention Layer

↻

Recovery

Long-term digital reclamation. Identity recovery, legal pathways, psychological support resources. structured as a step-by-step visual journey, not a reading list.

Reclamation Path

The design challenge was not content creation. it was information architecture. The research team provided exhaustive cybersecurity protocols; we restructured them into three immediately operational buckets with visual hierarchy, Arabic-first typography, and a colour-coded urgency system (red for crisis, cyan for prevention, warm white for recovery). The result is a 24-page guide designed for peer-to-peer distribution. passed hand to hand, not downloaded from an NGO website.

Womenatrix Survival Guide. Tactical Tool

The Survival Guide

24 pages of cybersecurity protocols, legal resources, and crisis response procedures. designed in Arabic with bilingual accessibility. A visual triage map built for peer-to-peer distribution.

View Full Guide (EN)

08. Visual Identity + Campaign

A visual system built
before the first frame.

The brand identity. logo, colour architecture, typographic rules, and design guide. was locked before a single image was generated. Every visual decision in both films, the poster series, and the campaign flows from this system.

The Colour Grammar

Cyan is the forensic register. the promise of data as a tool of liberation. Red is the rupture. algorithmic hostility breaking through the interface. Their split-light composition literalises the project's central tension in a single frame.

#050509 Void Black

The digital void. the space where threats live, invisible and ambient. Every scene begins here.

#FF0040 Danger Red

Psychological threat, surveillance rupture, the alarm that cannot be silenced. The dominant register of the short film.

#00D4FF Data Cyan

The forensic documentary register. Data, evidence, infrastructure. Technology as both weapon and witness.

#F0EDE8 Ink White

The human voice in a machine landscape. Warm enough to carry humanity. not clinical white, but ink.

Narrative Arc

CHAOS Red · Short Film

→

EVIDENCE Cyan · Documentary

→

AGENCY Light · Solutions

Visual Motifs

◈
Disembodied Hands
The invisible grip of digital seizure made physical.
◈
Code Projections
Surveillance architecture rendered across human silhouettes.
◈
HUD Data Overlays
Statistics as environment. numbers that are walls.

Typography in Frame

النسوية في العالم الرقمي

DIGITAL VIOLENCE DATA

43,539

Arabic and English as co-equals. Statistics rendered as visual architecture.

Brand System

Official Bilingual Logo. Cyan + Red System

Identity Booklet

Identity system in motion

Brand in context

Red rupture into cyan

HUD typography

Full visual register

Campaign Posters

Official Posters

Short Film, Horizontal Documentary horizontal poster

Documentary, Horizontal

Short Film, Vertical Documentary vertical poster

Documentary, Vertical

Campaign Series

Teasers

Video Teasers

Teaser, Vertical

Teaser 2

Teaser 3

09. Watch

Watch the films.
Experience the argument.

Two films. Two registers. One argument. The short film places you inside the crisis. The documentary maps it from above. Together they form a complete intervention.

Short Film 4:12

WOMENATRIX · The Short Film

4 minutes of AI-generated psychological horror. Red register. First-person. The system seen from inside.

Documentary 9:31

WOMENATRIX · The Documentary

9 minutes of forensic evidence. Cyan register. Third-person. Verified statistics rendered as cinema.

10. The Outcome

Half a million views.
Zero identities exposed.

0 Total Video Plays Across Platforms Combined reach within days of launch

0 Qualified Engaged Views on Documentary Not impressions. completed, engaged views

0 Real identities exposed

Café Digital. Closed-Circle Session

Designing the conversation space

The Café Digital webinar brought together participants from across the region for a closed-circle discussion on digital safety. We designed the dynamic presentation assets for the session. transforming what could have been a standard, dry video call into a visually resonant environment. Custom slide architecture, branded visual templates, and real-time data overlays turned a discussion into an experience.

"Our job wasn’t to write the research; it was to make sure it couldn’t be ignored. The hardest part wasn’t generating the AI sequences or crafting the visual language. it was maintaining the ethical line. Every time we designed a frame of digital violence, we had to ask: ‘Is this exposing a truth, or reproducing a harm?’ Navigating that visual tension is what made this an intervention, not just an art project."
AZRI Creative Studio

Closing

المستقبل لا يكتب بالخوارزميات، بل نكتبه نحن عندما نقرر كسر الصمت.

"The future is not written by algorithms. we write it when we decide to break the silence."

WOMENATRIX

The research existed. Nobody was watching it.