Marwa Arsanios's research-led practice often draws from a combination of history, politics, and literature. Have You Ever Killed a Bear? Or Becoming Jamila developed from a lecture, book, and installation of the same title, which similarly drew from 1950s- and 1960s-era issues of Al-Hilal. As part of its promotion of secularism and women’s liberation at that time, the magazine often featured women on its cover. Among these was Jamila Bouhired, a celebrated freedom fighter in the Algerian Revolution against French colonial rule, who, for Arsanios, was emblematic of this brief period in which women were publicly celebrated. In Arsanios’s video, an actor who has been asked to play Bouhired studies for her role by looking at old Al-Hilal issues, as well as various cinematic representations. Exploring Bouhired’s life story through different voices, the film alludes to both a feminist history lost to ideological shifts and revolutionary icons transformed into what the film deems “guardians of dictatorships”—accessories to the same oppression they had rebelled against in the first place.