Haifaa al-Mansour

Haifaa al-Mansour ( Hayfā’a al-Manṣūr; born 10 August 1974) is a Saudi Arabian film director. She is one of the country's best-known and one of the first female Saudi filmmakers. Early life and education Haifaa is the eighth (out of twelve) children of the poet Abdul Rahman Mansour, who introduced her to films by video, there being no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia between 1983 and 2018. One of her favourite actors was Jackie Chan. She is from Al Zulfi but grew up in Al-Hasa. Although her town was conservative, her father would go to a Blockbuster and grab any films that were available and bring them back home for their large family to enjoy together. Since cinema was banned in Saudi Arabia, Haifaa and her family received lots of judgment and threats from the people in her conservative town, but this never stopped her father from raising her and the other children to do things they felt passionate about. Although she grew up in a liberal family with non-traditional parents, her mother still had expectations for Haifaa to have a prestigious career. Her mother really wanted her to become a doctor, but that did not work out for Haifaa. She also tried becoming an engineer, but that also did not happen. With her father's encouragement, she studied comparative literature at The American University in Cairo. After school, Haifaa worked at an oil company and taught English, she later completed a master's degree in Film Studies from University of Sydney, Australia. Career She began her filmmaking career with three shorts, Who?, The Bitter Journey and The Only Way Out. The Only Way Out won prizes in the United Arab Emirates and in the Netherlands. She followed these with the documentary Women Without Shadows, which deals with the hidden lives of women in Arab States of the Persian Gulf. It was shown at 17 international festivals. The film received the Golden Dagger for Best Documentary in the Muscat Film Festival and a special jury mention in the fourth Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam. Haifaa al-Mansour was a guest at the 28th Three Continents Festival in Nantes, France.