This article proposes two hypotheses about the cultural agency of the veil. First, I argue the existence of a repertoire of the functions and effects of the trope of the veil in cinema, in terms of its eroticism, and its roles as an organizer of cinematic space and as an icon of Middle Eastern national identities embodied in their respective national cinemas. Second, I propose that the veil is an epistemological metaphor that defines two opposed paradigms: the Greek and the Semitic. One represents the total unveiling and total exposure of truth, transcendence, and knowledge; the other represents the dialectic of covering/uncovering, in which knowledge is always defined by a positioning towards transcendence and the dialectics of veiling/unveiling are the complex play that leads to knowledge. The veil, therefore, is not only about uncovering, but also about covering in order to know better.