This week, we’re joined by pioneering Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour for a conversation about her new film, UNIDENTIFIED — a tense and haunting mystery thriller set within the hidden world of modern Saudi women.
At the center of the film is Noelle Al Saffan, a recently divorced woman beginning a new life in the city. Working a clerical job in a police station, she becomes drawn into the case of a teenage girl whose body is discovered in the desert — unidentified, unclaimed, and almost erased.
What begins as a search for the girl’s name becomes something deeper: a story about identity, shame, silence, and the expectations placed on women in a society determined to keep certain truths out of sight.
Haifaa Al Mansour, the first female filmmaker from Saudi Arabia and the director of Wadjda and The Perfect Candidate, describes UNIDENTIFIED as the completion of her Saudi trilogy — films centered on women who step outside the roles assigned to them and challenge the systems built around them.
In our conversation, we talk with Haifaa Al Mansour about crafting a thriller that is both gripping and deeply personal, the evolution of Saudi cinema, and the complicated, contradictory women at the heart of her work.
Listen to our conversation with Haifaa Al Mansour about UNIDENTIFIED on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE.
