“Ojalá Supieras” Documentary

Ojalá Supieras [I wish you knew] is an immersive documentary that recovers the marginalized history of Islam in colonial Mexico. Using unpublished manuscripts, inquisitorial trials, and carefully reconstructed visual representations, the film reveals the silenced voices of people accused of crypto-Islam and persecuted for their faith. This work challenges the traditional historical narrative and shows how diverse communities—Muslim, Jewish,
Christian, and Indigenous—formed part of the cultural foundation of Viceregal Mexico. Ojalá Supieras invites the public to rethink historical
memory and to recognize the traces that still remain in our contemporary identity. Join us in celebrating Mariam Saada’s documentary and the end of the term!

Dr. Mariam Saada was born in Paris and is a polyglot fluent in French, Arabic, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She earned her doctorate in Historical Linguistics in Spanish from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2016, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Mexico, where she researched Arab and Islamic documentary traces in colonial Mexico (1570–1820), consulting seventeen archives. She is the author of the book ¡Allah! ¡Hashem! ¡Dios! El español no es tan español (2019), among other publications, and the screenwriter and director of the documentary Ojalá Supieras (2025).