Haifaa al-Mansour

Haifaa al-Mansour (Arabic: هيفاء المنصور‎‎; born 10 August 1974) is a film director from Saudi Arabia. She is one of the country's best-known and most controversial directors, and the first female Saudi filmmaker.

Haifaa al-Mansour is the eighth (out of twelve) child of the poet Abdul Rahman Mansour, who introduced her to films by video, there being no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia. One of her favourite actors was Jackie Chan. She is from Al Zulfi but grew up in Al-Hasa.

With her father's encouragement, she studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo. She later went on to attend film school in Sydney, Australia.

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.

Her feature debut, Wadjda, which she wrote as well as directed, made its world premiere at the 2012 Venice Film Festival; it is the first full-length feature to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and through 2013, the only feature-length film made in Saudi Arabia by a female director.Wadjda tells the story of an 11-year-old girl growing up in the suburbs of Riyadh, who dreams of owning and riding a green bicycle. The film was backed by Rotana, the film production company of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.Wadjda was selected as the Saudi Arabian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, which is the first time Saudi Arabia has submitted a film for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. The project had been developed in 2009 during the Gulf screenwriting lab, a collaboration between TorinoFilmLab and Dubai International Film Festival.

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