Saudi Arabian director and writer Haifaa Al-Mansour is trying something different for her latest feature, Unidentified, which opens in select cities this weekend before expanding, and following the filmโs debut at last yearโs Toronto International Film Festival. Itโs familiar in the sense that Unidentified closes out a trilogy of films from strong female perspectives that began with Wadjda in 2012 and continued with The Perfect Candidate in 2019, but different in the sense that her latest is a straight up, old fashioned genre effort.
With Unidentified, Al-Mansour (who also directed 2017โs Mary Shelley and currently has a robust career in series television) re-teams with The Perfect Candidate actress Mila Al Zahrani, who stars as Noelle, a 29 year old true crime buff who works at a police station in Northern Riyadh as a clerk. The stationโs chief, Captain Majid (Shafi Al Harthi), respects Noelleโs contributions and thinks she could enter into the police academy should she ever choose to do so. And for that reason, Majid turns to Noelle for help with a delicate case that could use a female perspective (as the only full time female officer on duty at the outpost is away for training at the moment).
An unidentified body of a young woman has been found in the middle of the desert. She looks to be from a well-to-do family, judging by her appearance, but no one is stepping forward to claim the body, and there arenโt any missing persons reports being filed to match the womanโs identity. There arenโt any DNA matches, no fingerprints, and no clear motivation to determine if this was domestic abuse, an honour killing, or just some kind of act of brazen cruelty. The manner of death only makes an already puzzling case even tougher to parse. Although her superiors and the lead detective on the case (played by Aziz Gharbawi) tell her to leave things alone, Noelle begins to actively conduct her own investigation and pursue leads.
Al-Mansour is probably best known for her early success with Wadjda, the first female helmed movie ever to be shot within The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so itโs not very surprising to learn, during our conversation while she was in New York, that she is a stickler for cultural and systemic accuracy when it comes to depicting policing and a womanโs role in such a force and country.
โWe had a consultant with us from the police department, just to make sure that everything is accurate, because they wanted to be represented right in terms of the way they dress and the way they greet each other,โ Al-Mansour says about the attention to details both big and small in Unidentified. โAnd they wanted the investigation to be accurate, so yes, we did a lot of research. We came up with something pretty accurate. Even our wardrobe department, the props, and production designers, they were in contact with the actual police, just to make sure we are on the right track.โ
With the story set in Saudi Arabia and coming from a female perspective, one might expect the main character to experience an extra level of pushback from the men around her. But while Noelle is told to stop being โrecklessโ and walk away from the case, the officers around her, particularly Captain Majid, are uniquely supportive at times. Itโs something many audience members outside the region where Unidentified is set might not be expecting.
โA lot of Middle Eastern men, whenever you see them in movies, they have the most petty battles and smallest sets of ideals, and itโs not always realistic,โ Al-Mansour says about the depiction of male characters in a lot of cinema from around the region. โAnd hopefully this could be setting an example for other men in the Middle East when they watch the movie. It is inspiring and aspirational to have a character like this, and for some men like the captain to see themselves in the reflection. Men are not all bad and women are not all good, and thatโs the reality of life. People are always more complex, and I like characters like that. And I also wanted this dynamic to be a friendship and not a romantic relationship, because having characters like this fall in love happens all the time in movies, especially in the Middle East. So I wanted that to be more like a friendship in the office, like where you have respect and you want to support your colleague, and you want to see them grow and take on more responsibilities with their careers. I wanted this to be a place where someone can just have a fulfilling professional life.โ
Unidentified also gave Al-Mansour a chance to reconnect with Al Zahrani in the lead; a decision that brought a lot of the energy she needed to make the film in her own vision.
โFirst of all, she’s an amazing person,โ Al-Mansour says glowing with praise for her star. โWorking with her was such a treat. We have a shorthand together that makes working together really easy, but she also has this amazing innocence and energy that she brings into characters. She was always the obvious choice for the lead. That was that! I have so much respect for her. I come from a small town in Saudi Arabia, and she does, too. She built herself up by herself, and I have so much respect for a woman who can claim their space. I want to support female driven films and actresses like her, who can write stories and create these complex, complicated, characters.โ
The film also gave Al-Mansour the chance to scratch a true crime itch that she had been developing for quite some time. A large part of this interview that was cut for brevity involved a loving discussion about how she binge-watched Forensic Files during the pandemic, something I also did with the free time I had on my hands. The ability to look inside places people donโt normally have access to has always fascinated Al-Mansour as a filmmaker, and in a bid to keep the experience of a character who also loves true crime narratives as accurate as possible, the film even turned to a world famous influencer in that sphere to play a part.
โI absolutely love, love, love the true crime world, and I love Get Ready With Me videos,โ Al-Mansour says of a specific type of video on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube that blend make-up tutorials with everyday discussions, sometimes of true crime cases. โThey have become huge in Saudi Arabia, just like everywhere else. And in the film we have Alix Earle, whoโs an influencer that does these kinds of videos, and sheโs popular everywhere from the US, to Saudi, to Antwerp, and beyond. I loved her energy, and I loved her videos, so I just contacted her on TikTok, and then Facebook, and and I finally got ahold of her on Instagram and said, โHey, do you want to be in our movie?โ And she agreed! So it was great to have someone from that world play such a pivotal part in the film.โ
One of the psychologically and sociologically fascinating aspects about true crime buffs is the general belief that people who gravitate towards such stories are interested in somehow unravelling darkness in their own lives. The character of Noelle is certainly no exception, and thatโs a thread that was definitely on Al-Mansourโs mind.
โAbsolutely,โ Al-Mansour says when asked about the correlation between Noelleโs current situation and her love for true crime. โNoelle is a character that is out of options. She’s a divorcee, in a society that puts a lot of emphasis on getting and staying married. Thatโs, like, the number one thing most people think women should do. She couldn’t be a mother, and she doesnโt have an influential family behind her. Sheโs not rich. And sometimes it feels like everybody’s telling her to disappear and just go away and vanish, because youโre not important. I definitely think she has a lot of internalized, damaging feelings being put into such a tight corner. Itโs like putting a dog into a small space and telling them to live with it. Itโs dehumanizing.โ
Unidentified is also a rarity in the crime-drama field by nature of its own setting. With a lot of noir-leaning storytelling techniques to be found within the script from Al-Mansour and Brad Niemann (who also co-wrote The Perfect Candidate), one could be forgiven for expecting a dark film thatโs always looking in shadowy corners. But instead, Unidentified is a movie that takes place predominantly in bright, searing sunlight for most of its running time, a reflection of a setting where cloud cover is often hard to come by.
โI wanted the feeling of a dark thriller, but I always wanted to be authentic to the culture at the same time,โ Al-Mansour says about the filmโs subversion of visual genre conventions. โIt had to be that way, in kind of an Italian neorealism kind of way, but we also try to bring in a little bit of the genre, with some of the Dutch angles, and the overwhelming size of the buildings or the mosque on top of her. We try to bring all of those things into the film here, and one of the films I wanted it to most be reminiscent of was The Usual Suspects. There are a lot of movies that inspired the feel, but The Usual Suspects was a big one. And then it became how to mix the setting with the story and bringing it all together.โ
Unidentified is now playing at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto and expands to additional Canadian cities throughout the summer.
