Haifaa Al-Mansour: Saudi Arabia’s First Female Film Director

Haifaa Al-Mansour is Saudi Arabia’s first female film director in a country where cinemas are illegal. Now, this brave director hopes her work will serve inspire other women in Saudi Arabia to tread the road less travelled by.

Being a film director and a woman in Saudi Arabia has posed various challenges for Haifaa: She’s received hate mails, offensive text messages and even death threats. Accused of making Westernized, biased films, of criticizing Islam and even tarred as a blemish on Saudi society, she remains unwavering in her aspirations. Haifaa is proving she isn’t the sort to give up easily.

Saudi Arabia in the Spotlight

Before 2005, Haifaa produced three short films. Her very first film Who? (2003) dealt with what would become a recurring theme: the restrictions placed on female clothing in the Kingdom. Her breakthrough came with the release of Women without Shadows, a controversial documentary that spotlights the stringent Saudi rules on how women should dress.

Women without Shadows has been screened at various international film festivals and won several awards: including The Golden Dagger at the Oman Muscat Film Festival. Naturally, it got EVERYONE talking from Damascus to Dublin.

There’s a great article about Haifaa in Womendialogue.org, in which she reveals her extraordinary story on the rocky run up to the big screen and the red carpet.

Putting Saudi Arabia on the Film-Producing Map

The film industry in Saudi Arabia is highly restricted: cinemas are banned and film production is practically non-existent. The first ever Saudi Arabian film came out in 2006. Keif al-Hal? ( How are you?)  was filmed in the UAE and featured Jordanian actors as the leads – with Haifaa Al-Mansour credited as Associate Producer.

Haifaa is currently working on her first fiction feature – a children’s film, part funded by and filmed in Saudi Arabia. Like her other films, it highlights the struggle of women in her homeland.

Al-Mansour grew up in a very liberal family, with 11 brothers and sisters. Her father is a legal advisor and also a well-known poet. As a child Al-Mansour watched her mother defy the rules by sometimes not wearing a headscarf. Her father even allowed her eldest sister to travel abroad to study.

Iranian Inspiration

Haifaa cites Iranian films as one of her great sources of inspiration. Directors like Abbas Kiarostami and Samira Makhmalbsf are two of many Iranian directors who have used children’s films as a basis for allegorical social narrative. This is something Haifaa admires and hopes to emulate as she tells Womendialogue:

“Saudi Arabia and Iran have, of course, two different histories, but our societies share many common traits: both are extremely conservative and the political situation in the two countries is also comparable. Iran, though, has a very long tradition of film-making, and in this respect our two countries differ greatly.”