THe perfect candidate

DRAMATIC FEATURE | 104 MINS | SAUDI ARABIA/GERMANY | DIRECTOR: HAIFAA AL-MANSOUR | PRODUCERS: ROMAN PAUL, GERHARD MEIXNER, HAIFAA AL-MANSOUR, BRAD NIEMANN | BYRON PREMIERE

A determined young Saudi doctor’s surprise run for office in the local city elections sweeps up her family and community as they struggle to accept their town’s first female candidate.

Maryam is an ambitious young doctor working in a small town clinic in Saudi Arabia. Despite her qualifications, she has to earn the respect of male colleagues and acceptance from her patients every day. After Maryam is prevented from traveling to Dubai in search of a better job, a bureaucratic mixup leads her to stumble on the application for her local city elections and she decides to run.

With her musician father away on tour playing the first public concerts allowed in the Kingdom in decades, Maryam enlists her two younger sisters to begin fundraising and planning campaign events. While they face the restriction of women’s traditional roles in the Kingdom at every turn, Maryam’s audacious candidacy starts to build momentum and challenges her conservative community. A tight race emerges between Maryam and her male opponent, as Maryam and her family mobilize their determination and creativity to move their traditional society forward.

Director and co-writer Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadjda, Mary Shelley) was the first female Saudi Arabian to direct a feature-length film.

Al-Mansour says "Through her journey I want to show an optimistic view of the role women can play in Saudi society and the contributions they can make towards forging their own destinies. I want to encourage Saudi women to take a chance and break away from the system that for so long has held us back. Change must ultimately be sustained and driven by the people who are most in need of improvements and increased mobility in their daily lives."

Arabic and English, with English subtitles