Haifaa Al Man­sour: ​‘It’s amaz­ing to shape art in Sau­di Arabia’

As the first female film direc­tor from Sau­di Ara­bia, Haifaa Al Mansour’s career has been built on break­ing bar­ri­ers. Her ear­ly, qui­et­ly rad­i­cal doc­u­men­taries about the women behind enforced veils, led to her enter­ing the glob­al stage with Wad­j­da, about a young girl deter­mined to ride a bicy­cle and, like her cre­ator, over­comes the obsta­cles of restric­tive gen­der roles to reach her goal. Her new film, The Per­fect Can­di­date, is a sto­ry of sis­ter­hood and stub­born­ness in Sau­di Ara­bia as Maryam, a coun­try doc­tor, runs for munic­i­pal can­di­da­cy, spurred by a deter­mi­na­tion not to be silenced.

LWLies: How did you come up with the con­cept: the female doc­tor run­ning for local government?

Al Man­sour: Sau­di Ara­bia is going through a trans­for­ma­tion. We are rebuild­ing insti­tu­tions. Women were only allowed to be doc­tors, nurs­es or teach­ers and the rest was lim­it­ed because the soci­ety was seg­re­gat­ed. The Arab world isn’t used to female politi­cians but it is so impor­tant to be rep­re­sent­ed in office. The pub­lic will not vote for a woman but I want­ed to show that we have to put our­selves out there, be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion, and even­tu­al­ly we will get there. These col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences will shape the per­cep­tion of women in the pub­lic con­science. My youngest sis­ter is a doc­tor, and the next eldest is the life of the par­ty, so I based Maryam and her sis­ters a lot on them.

In Mary Shel­ley, there’s the leg­end of a sub­ver­sive moth­er, much like the doc­tor, Maryam’s, moth­er, a wed­ding singer who fol­lowed her dreams despite the gos­sip. Was that pas­sion some­thing you saw in your own upbringing?

Absolute­ly, though our soci­ety was very con­ser­v­a­tive, my moth­er was strong. She didn’t adhere to the way women should be and wore a thin­ner veil than was cul­tur­al­ly accept­ed. As a kid in pub­lic school, I was real­ly embar­rassed but it taught me what defi­ance is and how to shape your own val­ues. It’s very hard com­ing from a place like Sau­di, we’re very trib­al and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty is not cul­ti­vat­ed or cel­e­brat­ed. It made me appre­ci­ate the space my par­ents allowed for me.

The sto­ry spends a lot of time in the female-dom­i­nat­ed world of wed­ding singers. Where did that fas­ci­na­tion arise from?

Enter­tain­ers in gen­er­al in Sau­di Ara­bia are not par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ued. The con­ser­v­a­tive Islamist ide­ol­o­gy is all about exclud­ing art from the pub­lic space. Women with very lim­it­ed eco­nom­i­cal means turn to such pro­fes­sions, but I feel it is very free­ing and it shows a lot of resilience. I grew up in a small town where there was no enter­tain­ment besides wed­dings. It’s one of the few places where you’d have a large group of women being them­selves and hav­ing fun.

You’ve talked in inter­views about a ​‘soft­er’ approach to fem­i­nism in art. Could you elaborate?

Where I come from there’s a lot of lines you have to be care­ful not to cross to get your film screened. But it’s impor­tant to work with­in this lim­it­ed artis­tic space and make it big­ger. I want to be heard back home and it’s impor­tant to bring a sto­ry that speaks to me and the peo­ple around me. It can be hard to intro­duce lib­er­al ideas and the soci­ety is scep­ti­cal of a woman mak­ing films, so I like to bring peo­ple on my side, rather than clash with them and be aggres­sive with my storytelling.

A decade after hav­ing to direct Wad­j­da from inside a van, was film­ing The Per­fect Can­di­date easier?

This time we had more legit­i­ma­cy so I didn’t have to be in the van. There was a very con­ser­v­a­tive per­son who called the police because they didn’t want us to film in their neigh­bour­hood, but we showed our per­mit, and the paper­work meant we couldn’t be stopped. But still there is room to grow, and even­tu­al­ly peo­ple will feel safe to film on the streets with­out feel­ing harassed.

How do you want your view­ers to take the film?

I strive to tell uni­ver­sal sto­ries with a humour that will trans­late. I hope West­ern view­ers can go beyond polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion about oil and con­flict and see the peo­ple, how they eat and think. It’s amaz­ing to shape art in the King­dom and make mean­ing­ful films out­side the main­stream to help expand our empa­thy. The indus­try is only just begin­ning and dis­tri­b­u­tion is still quite small so we don’t know how peo­ple will take the film but I think locals will come to see it because they know me.

The Per­fect Can­di­date is released dig­i­tal­ly on 27 March. For more info head to mod​ern​films​.com