“It’s simpler to get away with killing a girl. Sadly, society doesn’t care as a lot when a girl dies.”
That’s the truth of life in Saudi Arabia, stated writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour on the post-screening Q&A of her new film “Unidentified.” The movie, which premiered at Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, opens with a truck dashing off after having deposited the physique of a teenage lady wearing a college uniform on an remoted desert peak.
The peach-tinted coloring of the sand fills the body with quiet solemnity. Visually, Al-Mansour’s method is middle-of-the-road: it will get the job accomplished with out aptitude. The pacing feels proper from the start: because the story unravels, the plot factors neither dawdle nor lurch too rapidly ahead.
Al-Mansour — most likely essentially the most well-known and one of many first girls filmmakers in Saudi Arabia —returns with the ultimate movie in her trilogy that includes protagonists all with the surname Al Safan, every possessing an unshakeable will to claim her rights as a girl in a society the place doing so is commonly harmful.
Within the first characteristic of the trio, “Wadjda” (2013), a woman fights for the suitable to journey a bicycle, launched 5 years earlier than girls gained the suitable to drive automobiles in Saudi Arabia. In “The Perfect Candidate” (2019), a younger lady (Mila Al-Zahrani) runs for municipal workplace, one thing girls in Saudi Arabia first gained the suitable to do, together with voting, simply 4 years previous to its launch. And in “Unidentified,” a not too long ago divorced younger lady (once more Mila Al-Zahrani) strikes to town to stay alone and work as a file clerk at a police station when the homicide of a teenage Jane Doe compels her to unravel the case. (The Saudi Private Standing Legislation was enacted in 2022, increasing authorized pathways for ladies to provoke divorce.)
In every of those movies, the subtext is all the time to showcase the humanity and braveness of girls in Saudi Arabia, to place a face on the real-life reforms and make them appear much less just like the exception and extra just like the rule. And Al-Mansour, with an unique script co-written along with her husband Brad Niemann, nicely is aware of that creating difficult characters compelled to navigate tough conditions is extra compelling than a heavy-handed sermon to a largely Western viewers whose understanding of the Saudi cultural context hardly ever extends past honor killings and the deserves of the hijab. That’s to say, what Westerners learn about Saudi is commonly skewed or incomplete. Because the final movie in Al-Mansour’s trilogy, “Unidentified” turns up the warmth, making a determined flip into style filmmaking — the homicide thriller — the place there’s room (lastly) for Saudi girls to be villainous.
Mila Al-Zahrani, because the lead character Noelle, ably delivers a deeply grounded efficiency, embodying her steely will and relentless pursuit of the lady’s killer, paired along with her ever-present trendy black leather-based bag. Spurred on by her obsession with the movies of an influencer who combines make-up tutorials with true crime distillations, she makes use of gender roles to her benefit, getting nearer to the ladies within the sufferer’s orbit than any policeman might on this observant Muslim nation.
Nonetheless, the stakes might’ve been amplified: each time Noelle disobeys the orders of her father-like police sergeant, Majid (Shafi Al-Harthi, who additionally appeared in “Wadjda”), she receives little blowback. As she will get very near fixing the case, past the delicate eerie noise in Noelle’s house on the highest flooring of her constructing, intimidation by the killer surfaces too late within the story, muting the viewer’s sense of her being in peril. There’s a large twist on the finish, that one doesn’t see coming, which impresses. The shock is intelligent, however undercuts its emotional affect by arriving with out enough setup.
If the one manner this movie distinguishes itself is in its potential to humanize and complicate flat depictions and erasure of Saudi girls, that’s no small feat. Many several types of girls encompass Noelle as she makes an attempt to establish the Jane Doe: rebellious youngsters, faculty principals, widows who worth custom, entrepreneurs, a police officer at her station, even the medical coroner who lets her examine the physique for clues. That sort of intentionality across the potential of fictional narratives to alter concrete realities — the power to visually think about change — creates a dwelling, respiratory empathy “machine,” to borrow Roger Ebert’s phrase. Al-Mansour not solely reminds us that motion pictures are alleged to generate empathy, she exhibits us exactly how.
“As girls from the Center East, we are sometimes portrayed as victims with no company. That’s not the total image. Arab girls have sass, hustle, and complexity,” continued Al-Mansour on the post-screening Q&A. “Life within the Center East could be harsh and demoralizing, and ladies are part of that actuality too. However we’re not all the time harmless angels. We don’t all the time should be the ethical spine of a society; we could be flawed, conflicted, and problematic.”
In “Unidentified,” girls are good, girls are unhealthy, and ladies are the whole lot in between. In a society the place a girl’s loss of life can simply go unnoticed, this movie makes positive the viewers pays consideration.
Grade: B+
“Unidentified” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. Sony Photos Classics will launch it at a later date.
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