‘Norah’: Red Sea Review

Dir/scr: Tawfik Alzaidi. Saudi Arabia. 2023. 94mins.

In a small tribal village in Saudi Arabia within the mid-90s, Norah (Maria Bahrawi), a younger girl with a stressed spirit, desires of a life past the restrictive confines of her group. When Nader (Yaqoub Alfarhan), a brand new instructor from town arrives on the village, towards the chances (and the strict societal guidelines) the 2 kindred spirits forge a connection, bridged by a mutual appreciation of artwork. Shot totally within the putting AlUla area of Saudi Arabia, and making full use of the realm’s spectacular backdrop and wealthy heritage, it is a assured and achieved characteristic debut from Tawfik Alzaidi.

Walks the difficult line between observing Saudi sensibilities whereas delivering an emotional hook for worldwide audiences

Riyadh-based director Alzaidi has honed his filmmaking expertise with a sequence of shorts, profitable prizes at festivals throughout the area. Norah’s screenplay additionally received a fund award from the Saudi Movie Fee’s Daw Movie Competitors, and was additionally supported by a post-production grant from the Crimson Sea Movie Pageant Basis. Regardless of a barely anticlimactic ending, its polished manufacturing values and a richly realised sense of time and place ought to make this a title of curiosity past the home market, with additional pageant publicity seemingly.

It’s a delicately dealt with story, a bit of filmmaking that walks the difficult line between observing Saudi sensibilities whereas additionally delivering an emotional hook for worldwide audiences. There’s a craving for contact between the 2 central characters, nevertheless it chastely stops wanting overt romantic curiosity. As an alternative, the love affair for each is with artistic expression – one thing that, throughout this era in Saudi Arabia, is forbidden in all types.

Nader’s arrival within the village is trigger for pleasure, not least as a result of the brand new instructor, along with his dashing movie-star appears to be like and his opulent moustache, arrives carrying mirrored sun shades. The native boys squeal with pleasure. Nader is considered as progressive by the village elders as a result of he goals to show his college students the right way to learn and write, fairly than to solely examine the Koran. It’s an strategy which isn’t totally welcomed inside the group, the place progress, together with books and electrical energy, is met with suspicion, and outright hostility from some quarters.

Norah and Nader first change into conscious of one another, in a reasonably overt piece of symbolism, as factors of sunshine within the darkness. Each keep awake late into the evening, the lights of their rooms burning within the smothering desert darkness. Orphaned Norah shuts herself away from her aunt and uncle to hearken to forbidden music cassettes and pore over her treasured assortment of magazines. Nader smokes cigarettes (Marlboro Reds, fairly than the native model) and, because the movie progresses and largely because of Norah, rekindles his love of drawing.

He’s prompted to choose up his pencil to sketch a portrait as a reward for the boy who did greatest in a grammar quiz. The boy occurs to be Norah’s youthful brother Nayaf (Abdulrahman Alwafi), and his success is because of her teaching. And whereas Norah’s aunt condemns the image because the “work of the satan”, Norah is fascinated and turns into consumed by the thought of getting her personal portrait drawn. It’s a problem for Nader, who’s initially resistant. Norah is veiled, however exhibits her eyes in a sequence of covert preliminary sittings. In the meantime, Thafur (Shayim Alanazi), to whom Norah is unwillingly promised in marriage, begins to suspect that one thing is amiss.

There’s a breathless, against-the-clock pacing to the ultimate act, because the village elders act to quash the affect of the instructor. However the conclusion is a little bit unsatisfying: whereas Norah’s portrait is launched into the broader world, the destiny of Norah herself is much less sure.