Saudi Arabia Scores First Cannes Selection Slot With Drama ‘Norah’

Saudi Arabia has landed its first film in the Cannes Film Festival official selection with “Norah,” a drama by pioneering director Tawfik Alzaidi set in 1990s Saudi, when conservatism was at its height and all forms of art and painting were banned for religion-related reasons.

“Norah,” which premiered locally in December at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, will be launching internationally from Cannes’ prestigious Un Certain Regard section, marking the first Saudi film to screen in Cannes and becoming a symbol of the kingdom’s rapidly growing moviemaking ambitions since Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year-old religion-related ban on cinema in 2017.

The film’s titular character, played by Saudi newcomer Maria Bahrawi, is an illiterate orphaned young woman who lives in a remote village where she faces an arranged marriage in which she will be trapped and has a need for self expression. She intersects with an artist named Nader, played by Saudi star Yaqoub Alfarhan (“Rashash”), who has given up painting and moved to the village to be a schoolteacher. This chaste encounter unleashes in “Norah” a passion for art and, by extension, for a better life away from the village.

“Norah” which was the first Saudi film to be shot in AlUla, the sprawling area of Saudi desert and giant boulders that boasts an ancient city, won the top prize of a funding award launched by the Saudi Film Commission’s Daw Film Competition, an initiative launched by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture in September 2019 to support Saudi film production and champion the next generation of filmmakers.

The film is produced by Alzaidi and U.S. producer Paul Miller, the former Doha Film Institute head of finance who shepherded “Scales” – which was Saudi’s submission for the Oscars in 2020 – and by Jordanian producer Sharif Majali. They worked with Saudi production companies Black Sugar Pictures and Nebras Films.

Global rights to the film were acquired in December by a new company launched in Riyadh by former Universal Pictures exec Paul Chesney called TwentyOne Entertainment.