Maryam is an ambitious young doctor working in a small town clinic in Saudi Arabia. Despite her qualifications, she has to earn the respect of male colleagues and acceptance from her patients every day. After Maryam is prevented from traveling to Dubai in search of a better job, a bureaucratic mixup leads her to stumble on the application for he
With her musician father away on tour playing the first public concerts allowed in the Kingdom in decades, Maryam enlists her two younger sisters to begin fundraising and planning campaign events. While they face the restriction of women’s traditional roles in the Kingdom at every turn, Maryam’s audacious candidacy starts to build momentum and challenges her conservative community. A tight race emerges between Maryam and her male opponent, as Maryam and her family mobilise their determination and creativity to move their traditional society forward.
Haifaa Al Mansour
finished her bachelor’s degree in Literature at the American University in Cairo and completed a Master’s degree in Directing and Film Studies from the University of Sydney. She is considered the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia and her feature film WADJDA (2012) was the first international film ever to be shot inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Invited to over 40 festivals worldwide, WADJDA garnered numerous awards - among others in Venice, Rotterdam, and Dubai.
This film offers a fascinating insight to life inside Saudi Arabia, still one of the most conservative societies in the world, where women just earned the right to vote in 2015 and the right to drive in 2018.
Joanne Shurwell, Forbes
SCHEDULE AND VENUE
Film screening
20 November 2020, 7 pm
Cinema Akil, Dubai
Film screening
26 November 2020, 7 pm
Cinema Akil, Dubai
Cinema Akil
WAREHOUSE 68, ALSERKAL AVENUE
AL QUOZ INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT
DUBAI, UAE
