Saudi Arabia's first female director takes on women in politics in The Perfect Candidate

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Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour returns to her home country for a drama about a stubborn young doctor running in her local council election.

When writer-director Haifaa al-Mansour debuted with the hit coming-of-age drama Wadjda, in 2012, she became the first woman in Saudi Arabia to helm a feature film.

She takes the dusty dirt road to her workplace, the only emergency clinic in the area, and trudges up the weightily metaphoric boggy path that urgently needs to be repaired. Maryam's mounting fury – cranked up further after she's barred from travelling without her legal guardian's approval – pushes her to aspire to be more than "some country hick" and, eventually, to nominate herself for the council chair.But the lived reality that Maryam is forced to reckon with is a world apart, with many people clinging to old patriarchal attitudes.

Beyond simply detailing what women can and cannot do, the film more substantially examines how women are choosing to use their newfound liberties. Al-Mansour has said she is passionate about telling womens' stories after growing up in Saudi Arabia, where women were excluded from public space.Her frustrated outbursts throughout the film inject some welcome feral energy – most memorably when she scolds a tent full of men who believe "a woman's place is in the home" – making it hard not to get emotionally caught up in her campaign.

 

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