Haifaa Al Mansour

Haifaa AL-MANSOUR (1974, Saudi Arabia) studied Literature at the American university in Cairo, and later obtained a Master's degree in film studies and film directing at the university of Sydney. With her first three short films and her award-winning documentary Women Without Shadows (2005), taboo-breaking Al-Mansour influenced many directors in her region. With her much-lauded feature debut Wadjda (2012), she became the first Saudi director to realise a feature-length film shot completely in the Kingdom. She followed up on this success by directing two Hollywood productions, Mary Shelley (2017) and Nappily Ever After (2018), and several episodes for major television series. Al-Mansour's fourth and most recent film, The Perfect Candidate (2019), was also shot in Saudi Arabia and premiered in the main competition of the 2019 Venice Film Festival.