First Saudi female film director

Women in Saudi Arabia cannot drive, vote or work with men but one woman has become the country’s first film-maker to direct a film in her homeland.Haifa al Mansour has made a film titled ‘Wadjda’- that has received critical acclaim around the world but cannot actually be shown in Saudi Arabia because there are no cinemas and few films are given a public showing.It is a ground-breaking film that was shot in the Kingdom itself and has an all-Saudi cast which, surprisingly, includes two lead women. The movie is due to be released next year.When al Mansour was growing up in a small town in Saudi Arabia, she dreamed of making films but thought it would never happen in a country where women are restricted in the jobs they can choose.Luckily for her, she says, her father believed that despite her gender she could achieve anything she wanted. But a lot of pressure was put on her to stop her from pursuing her career. “You know Saudi Arabia is very tribal,” she says.“People from our extended family would write letters to him telling him ‘how dare you let your daughter do that’. There is social pressure on a lot of families to control their daughters and he never listened to that.” BBC

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First Saudi female film director