Amid the numerous art exhibitions, electronic music concerts, film festivals, and other monumental events in Saudi Arabia today, it is hard to imagine another period not so long ago when art creation was largely suppressed in the kingdom. “Norah” – Saudi writer and director Tawfik Alzaidi’s first feature film and the first ever film from Saudi Arabia selected for Cannes’ prestigious “Un Certain Regard” section – captures what life was like during the Gulf country’s most conservative era, when artistic expression was largely banned and discouraged. Still, as Alzaidi demonstrates, a desire for creativity prevailed. And this human need to express oneself through art has set the stage for the cultural renaissance since Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman launched his Vision 2030 agenda for socioeconomic change.

The film is set in a remote village during the 1990s. It is the first Saudi film to be shot in Al-Ula, the kingdom’s ancient desert landscape in Madinah province, where inhabitants reside amid the rocky desert terrain with no electricity and very few modern amenities. Norah, a young girl, played by Maria Bahrawi, who feels trapped within her environment, uses her local shopkeeper from Chennai, India, as a backchannel to access glossy magazines. She purchases them at his store and flips the pages longingly to view women abroad at fancy events. At times the faces and bodies are scribbled out with a black marker in line with the conservative Islamic nature of the time that forbade the depiction of the human form. “People in magazines have different lives,” she says during one of the first scenes in the movie. “I no longer have anything left in this village except my magazines and my dreams.” Norah wants to go to the “big city,” but her aunt, whom she lives with after her mother and father passed away, will not allow her to leave. She is to stay in the village and get married and live her life there. Yet she dreams for something else.

Then she meets Nader, a new schoolteacher in the village who comes from an unnamed “big city” to teach young boys to read and write Arabic. Norah’s brother, Naif, is a student at Nader’s school. Once Norah learns from Naif that Nader is an artist, she becomes determined to meet him and have him paint her portrait, an act that at the time was not permitted under conservative Islamic belief. Nader eventually agrees, his artistry ignited by Norah’s desire. The pair risk everything to create Norah’s portrait in secret, and, as they do so, they develop a connection and discuss the state of the world around them, encouraging Norah even more to escape the village and find freedom in a place where she can freely express herself.

Norah’s frustration surrounding her state and use of magazines to escape and connect with the world outside reflects Alzaidi’s own development as an artist. “I have had a passion for creativity and art since I was nine years old,” said Alzaidi during an interview at Cannes. “I have always been close to art and music specifically. I used to appreciate art through magazines and music tapes. When I started writing the story for ‘Norah,’ I began writing about a person who lived in this environment with art, even though it was not allowed in public places in the ‘90s. I believe art is inside each and every person.”

Alzaidi, born in 1982 and based in Riyadh, began making short films in 2006 before cinemas were reopened in 2018. The tumultuous year of 1979, when a few hundred militants stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca, put a halt to the modernization of Saudi society. Cultural centers and cinemas were closed, nonreligious music was banned from television, and schools began implementing a strict Islamic conservative education, with boys and girls separated.

“I experienced the same feelings that ‘Norah’s’ characters did during those years but from a filmmaker’s perspective: He makes films, but there is no place to show his films,” recalled Alzaidi. “This is where the idea of the story began.”

Yacoub Alfarhan, who plays Nader and is one of the leading new faces in Saudi cinema as well as a longtime friend and colleague of Alzaidi’s, recalled how the pair long dreamed of presenting stories from Saudi Arabia at Cannes. “We always dreamed of doing something together to share stories from Saudi Arabia with the world,” said Alfarhan, remembering how Alzaidi first told him the story of “Norah” in 2015, several years before cinemas reopened and the changes of Vision 2030 began to be implemented. “I immediately loved the idea,” stated Alfarhan. “This journey of nearly 10 years working on the story and then the film saw us consistently perfecting the narrative and how it reflected a certain period in Saudi’s history. We want to enable the world to view our stories told and produced by us.”

“Norah” is groundbreaking not only for its admittance into Cannes but for what it symbolizes as the kingdom continues to undergo rapid sociocultural change and opening to the world after decades of closure. It would have been near impossible to produce the film in the kingdom not just for logistic reasons but also due to its poignant and sensitive subject matter that sheds light on life and creativity during the Gulf country’s most conservative period.

The film, which had its world premiere in December 2023 in Jeddah during the Red Sea Film Festival, was widely released in Saudi theaters at the end of June. The script for “Norah” won a funding award from the Daou Film Competition sponsored by the Saudi Film Commission – an initiative launched by the Ministry of Culture in 2019 to support the growth of the Saudi film industry and encourage young Saudi filmmakers. “Norah” also won the Best Saudi Feature Film Award in 2023 at the third Red Sea International Film Festival.

The film is a significant marker of the kingdom’s rapidly growing film industry following the lifting of the 35-year ban on cinema. “Most of us make up the first generation of artists in our families,” mentioned Alfarhan. “Most of us lived in Saudi Arabia during the ‘90s – a very interesting period. And we have many stories to tell the world. Right now, the priority is to continue working and producing in Saudi to tell our tales from here to the rest of the world.”

Art, as Alzaidi’s debut feature demonstrates, can facilitate dialogue among people, promote new ideas, and bring about social change. It is this art that the kingdom is championing now. And it is through stories such as that of “Norah” that filmmakers like Alzaidi and actors like Alfarhan hope will open the world to a greater awareness of recent social history in Saudi Arabia.

“My goal was to make a film that everyone could feel and not just watch,” said Alzaidi at Cannes. “This is what the film is about … the relationship between humans and art. Art, for me, is a communication tool between people.”