Wadjda is the first full-length feature film shot entirely inside Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic country where women are denied civic freedoms or any public role. It’s director is Haifaa Al-Mansour, a Saudi-born female filmmaker who now lives in Bahrain. While shooting on location in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Al-Mansour had to hide in a production van, directing her actors via walkie-talkie, because she could not publicly mix with her male crew.
Before Midnight is the third in Richard Linklater’s intermittent catch-ups with Jesse and Celine, characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who the filmmaker first introduced in 1995’s Before Sunrise.
