An Interview by Arameh Etemadi | Cinema Without Borders
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Haifaa Al Mansour Interview: Unidentified
Haifaa Al Mansour did not arrive at the cinema through the usual doors. Saudi Arabia’s first female feature film director came to it sideways, quietly, making her debut from inside a van — directing actors through a monitor because a woman on a public film set was, at the time, simply not done. That film was Wadjda. A girl. A bicycle. A kingdom that would, five years later, let women drive.
Her new film, Unidentified, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, is a different kind of story. Nawal is a police archivist — a woman whose life has been taken apart piece by piece: a child lost, a marriage dissolved, a co-wife she never chose. When a murder lands on her desk, the film begins to ask what a woman does with that much accumulated loss. It is not a comfortable question, and Al Mansour does not offer a comfortable answer.
I spoke with Al Mansour via Zoom on June 1st, 2026, as part of the film’s international press junket. As a woman who grew up in the Middle East myself — in Iran, not Saudi Arabia, but close enough to recognize the architecture of constraint — the conversation felt less like an interview and more like a reckoning.
Arameh Etemadi: As a woman from the Middle East myself, and you being a woman from the Middle East too — what struck me in this film is that while it shows a woman’s courage, it also shows women standing against women. You were very bold in showing that when law and tradition serve men, women turn on each other. How did you find the strength to tell this story, knowing you would face criticism from the men of your own country?
Haifa Al Mansour: It is easier to get away with killing a woman. You understand this if you’re from the Middle East — the logic of shame and honor means people don’t want to investigate. They want to let it go. Anyone with a criminal mind will think: it is safer to kill a woman than a man. That needs to change. Women’s lives are as valuable as men’s. But it is not about law alone — it is about how the tribe perceives women, how tradition is transmitted across generations. It will not change overnight. But it must start now, with women discussing it, naming it, refusing to be silent about it.
Arameh Etemadi: How did you find this story? What was the journey toward a narrative about a woman who loses a child, has a co-wife, and gets divorced?
Haifa Almansour: I wanted to tell a character with history — and without options. A woman who has been cornered. She lost her child, her husband, so much of herself. When you take everything from a woman and push her into a corner, it changes her psychology. We cannot expect women to remain simply nice and happy when we deny them respect, dignity, and choice. There is enormous violence against women in the way we normalize their erasure — especially in the Middle East, where divorce is as easy as one word for a man, and nearly impossible for a woman unless he agrees to it. That unequal structure is a form of violence. Nawal is its product.
Arameh Etemadi: Your earlier film was about a woman not being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Five years later, that law changed. Do you think that one day, with MBS’s reforms, this film might be looked back on the same way — as a document of something that used to be? Do you think polygamy could ever become illegal in Saudi Arabia?
Haifa Almansour: I don’t see it coming soon. Even the more progressive countries in the region — Egypt, Lebanon — still permit polygamy. It is embedded. But I do believe the younger generation is increasingly against it. They will not see themselves in it. They are more modern, more educated, and women are refusing the situation, speaking for themselves. That is where change begins — not from legislation, but from a generation that no longer accepts what the previous one normalized.
Arameh Etemadi: I grew up in the Middle East too, but with relatively more visible freedoms for women. Watching the women in this film — the way they live, move, work — was fascinating to me. Is this lifestyle, after Mohammed bin Salman’s reforms, the reality for most Saudi women? Or is it only visible among the wealthy, or only in Riyadh?
Haifa Almansour: The situation has changed so much, and not only in Riyadh. My younger nieces work everywhere. One of them spent a summer working at IKEA as a salesperson — that would have been unthinkable before. There is enormous push for the arts, for women’s rights, for participation. But people themselves are still navigating it — they are traditional, religious, and there is a subconscious resistance to fully embracing what is now permitted. It is not hypocrisy. It is the gap between law and culture. The film reflects that gap — Nawal runs her police station almost single-handedly, she has agency. And yet.
Arameh Etemadi: One thing that caught my attention was the close relationship between the protagonist and the colonel. In a conservative society like mine — like ours — a relationship like that, between a divorced woman and her male superior who covers for her mistakes, might be read as something unconventional or even improper. Was that a risk you consciously took? Or were you trying to normalize a kind of simple professional closeness between a woman and her boss?
Haifa Almansour: Absolutely — we want to normalize that relationship. Not everyone who is kind to you is in love with you. Come on. Let’s be colleagues. Let’s share a podcast recommendation. That does not make us romantically connected. But if you are from the Middle East, you know: a man smiles at a woman and people already have a story. We wanted to say: this is refreshing, and men should see it and think, yes, we can be colleagues. We can share interests. That is all. What is also interesting, though, is that Nawal’s character is morally complex — the way she uses the trust people place in her is questionable. That complexity was important to preserve.
Arameh Etemadi: How do people in Saudi Arabia react to your films? Especially women. I’d love to hear both the positive and the negative — or the more surprising ones.
Haifa Almansour: They enjoyed it. We opened in theaters at the Red Sea Film Festival and the response was warm — it was a fun premiere, Mila was there, and there was real excitement. The film is a thriller, a fictional film. It is not a documentary. It is built on authentic locations and cultural truth, but it is also cinema — imaginary. And people embrace that. They understand the character. They understand where she comes from. I was afraid some might not identify with her, or might condemn her too quickly. But there was understanding for her journey. That was what moved me.
Arameh Etemadi: Saudi women must have so many untold stories. The Middle East carries so many powerful ones. Do you think Saudi society will ever be ready to see bold, unconventional stories about women on the biggest screen?
Haifa Almansour: Yes. Absolutely. I think they are ready — they were ready. It is not easy to put a strong, complicated woman on screen and have audiences embrace her. And they did. They embraced it. There will always be resistance — there will always be voices saying you shouldn’t say that, feminism is dangerous, this is not our culture. But those voices are becoming the minority. The mainstream is moving. And that is what matters.
Unidentified opens in limited release on June 19, 2026. It is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.
This Haifaa Al Mansour interview was first published on Cinema Without Borders.
