Unidentified, Sin identificarthe brand new movie by Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour, is a thriller very canonical (even in its surprising twist on the finish) and carried out with neatness and ability by its director and screenwriter, identified for her movies Wadja (the inexperienced bicycle), Mary Shelley o The good candidate. What makes it fascinating is the place it takes place (Riyadh) and the portrait it paints of a society, Saudi Arabia, in full transformation and filled with contradictions, particularly concerning the function of ladies. Beyond exhibiting how sensible the niqab is to hold out police surveillance with out being found or how curious the abaya (the obligatory lengthy tunic) appears with the Adidas samba sneakers, Unidentified It permits a privileged glimpse right into a closed world through which conventional types of oppression of ladies coexist at the moment with shocking indicators of openness and surprising behaviors. The movie, which is offered on the BCN Film Fest in Barcelona and can hit theaters on June 26, focuses on the investigation of novice detective Nawal (Mila Alzahrani), who works as a secretary in a petty crime police station, to make clear the dying of a younger lady murdered within the desert on the outskirts of town.
Al-Mansour (Al Zulfi, province of Riyadh, 51 years previous), smiles when requested on the outset, altering his opinion on the crime from the detective to the unbelievable. Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro and Jacob Elordi. “Ah, I liked it a lot, very different, however, from my approach in Mary Shelleyfocused on the theme of women and birth.” Unidentifiedwith the protagonist and the murdered woman’s companions driving their automobiles by means of the streets of Riyadh, hooked to a podcast of true crime and make-up and even stopping at a music bar the place a feminine band performs stay with no scarf of any sort, reveals surprising adjustments in Saudi society (we should keep in mind that ladies had been prohibited from driving till 2018). “Yes, things are evolving in the right direction, the opportunity has opened for women to be lawyers, etc.,” says the director. “The truth is that I did not expect it. And it is very important because Saudi Arabia has a very important role as a prescriber in the Muslim world.”
The filmmaker could be very glad with “the evolution towards modern ideas and tolerance” in her nation, the place she observes “a stable situation.” Well, not now, the best way the area is… Al-Mansour disagrees: “Saudi Arabia has put rationality in all this madness, for now.”
Despite the optimism for the rising freedom of ladies expressed, she factors out, by way of driving, social habits or sports activities, the director warns of the repressive function of households, which, as proven within the movie, beginning with the moms of the protagonist and the sufferer, and the director of the ladies’ faculty, “are quite conservative, not everyone embraces the changes.” Regarding the significance of the household setting in Saudi society, keep in mind that “deep down we are tribal, and the family even decides whether or not you can drive.” However, the filmmaker continues, “you have to give them time and everything will work out.”
Unidentified It reveals a lady free of the yoke of her husband, divorced, and who aspires to a task—being a detective—far above that which has historically been reserved for ladies in Saudi Arabia. Time and once more, courageous and decisive Nawal outperforms her police bosses in investigating crime.
The aforementioned ending of the movie, with its twist (the filmmaker and writer of the story refers back to the affect of Usual Suspects, which she loves), questions the imaginative and prescient of the protagonist, however Al-Mansour justifies that she doesn’t like ladies in a single piece. “It is important to portray complex, difficult, real women, not to fall into the cliché of the marginalized, selfless, hard-working and positive woman. I find it very refreshing to show them with a dark side.” In truth, those that seem fairly easy, in a variety of poisonous masculinities, are the boys, beginning with the paternalistic police chief Majid (Shafi Alharthi), who has no abdomen for seeing useless our bodies, the obtuse and (extra) sexist inspector Ali (Aziz Gharbawi), or the tormented and tearful avenue artist and cousin of the murdered Mishal (Abdullah Alqahtani). “Majid loves and protects Nawal, but it also reflects the conflicts in Saudi society, especially regarding relationships with women,” says the director.
In Unidentified The self-confidence of younger Saudi ladies (at the least the higher class ones) is shocking, true lolitas from Riyadh who let their hair down in each means and put on false nails. “We see a lot of change in young women, who do not accept tradition and want to rebel. They aspire to have the same as the rest of the world. Again, when I portray the school environment of these young women, I try to reflect that, what happens in society, with the influence of noir but also from Italian neorealism, crime rooted in a society.”
The film shows the proceedings of a police investigation in Saudi Arabia. “They are very similar to those in, for example, the United States, the police are quite the same everywhere, although scientific methods are more advanced in the West.” Al-Mansour emphasizes that he loves the police genre. “I watched the entire series of Forensic files and I’m a big fan of noir. But what interests me is through the genre to show and try to understand aspects of the society and the country in which the story takes place.”
The filmmaker says that in Saudi Arabia there are already female police officers, “but they are not yet allowed to investigate on the ground like men, there are plans so that they can.” He does not agree that his film is not very violent. “There is violence, and loads of it, the society that I painting is in opposition to ladies and that should be stated and denounced. The violence that we see is systematic and every day, not precisely killing.” There is a violence in the film that is expressed in the protagonist’s frustration at being relegated to making photocopies at the police station every day. “Exactly, it’s like a sentence, a tremendous frustration.”
Al-Mansour appreciates Saudi Arabia’s current effort to help and develop its cinematography (the nation had a cinema ban till 2018). “It is important to support the industry, we are going through a new phase,” he emphasizes. He trusts that the dramas of Palestine and the battle in Iran “do not make people only see that when they look at the region” and that there’s room for hope for constructive growth in his nation.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2026-04-23/haifaa-al-mansour-cineasta-de-arabia-saudi-me-sirvo-del-genero-policiaco-para-mostrar-la-sociedad-de-mi-pais.html