 It's amazing to see you today. A lot of women here to support women. It's really amazing. Thank you so much for coming. I just want to say like it took five years to get Wajda off the ground and it is a very personal project because it is about my hometown where I grew up and all that but it is also about embracing the ideas that makes us move away from intolerance, makes us embrace what is good in us, hard work, accepting others and love and that is what art should do. Break all the barriers between religions and cultures and make us understand how we respect each other and love each other and be kind to each other. So thanks again for coming today. That's why we said okay we're going to try to shoot the film in Saudi Arabia. No one has ever done this before but we spoke to people and asked them do you think this is possible and the answer was yes and then we thought well why don't we try that way it might not be the easiest thing to do but making films is not always about choosing the easy way but perhaps the most challenging and the most exciting to shoot a feature film in a country where cinemas are not allowed. Of course you know with the rules in Saudi that women and men cannot really be together in public, cannot work together in public. Of course poses certain challenges in the production and you have to respect also local rules and customs and traditions. You have to learn to be a filmmaker and to be a filmmaker. This is a great experience for me. I try to develop myself in a way that is unique. After the challenges I faced, the cameras in Saudi Arabia always found people interested who listen to your voice and know a lot of things. But when you're a woman trying to film in Saudi Arabia, this is something else. This is a nice thing, but another thing is that for example, when we were kids, we didn't shoot outside with the kids. This is a big challenge, you can't see them, you can't give them information, you have to go to them, you can't go to them, you can't go out. Sometimes it's hard. Good morning. Someone is coming, someone is coming. I'm here to control you, to control you and to help you. I was talking with a teacher, who was the Minister of Science, the Minister of Interior, you're talking with him? Yes, I didn't ask him that. I didn't ask him. I didn't ask him, that's it. any person's job. This is your job. This is your job, this is your job. I'll talk to them. I hope that gave a little bit of a flavor of the challenges of making this film. And in the few minutes that we have, I think we want to explore a little bit more about the film itself, a little bit more about Haifa and then maybe what the impact of the film is made. But those who just in a nutshell haven't seen the film, and by the way just a plug, you can buy it on Amazon and see it at home, the full feature. But it's a film about a girl in Saudi Arabia who wants to raise money for a bicycle in a society that sees a bicycle as a challenge to her virtues as a young girl and all that goes into that. So really talking about a young girl who's seeking her own route and seeking her own route for empowerment. So maybe just start with why did you choose that as a subject and what was your inspiration for doing this film? I wrote the story about very much where I come from. I grew up in a small town in Saudi and I went exactly the same school, public schools and where the girl went to in the film. But I come from a very middle class, like normal family, not rich or anything, but my parents are very supportive and kind and they never compromised on my freedom, but whenever I go to school I'm confronted with a different reality where I know exactly where I stand in the scheme of things. And I was really like that little space at home allowed me to make films and to travel and to do things. But all the girls I went to school with, these are my inspiration. They had so much potential, but they never realized it because they never had the same support. And some of them are amazing girls, they could have changed the world if they gave them the chance. And that is for them to embrace who they are and continue to fight. It's not like in political way, but as much as embrace something they really love and continue fighting for who they are. And seeing this I think it's hard not to be struck by both the cultural clashes as well as how in some ways this making of this film brought two different cultures, probably even three different, multiple cultures together. You yourself are now kind of a product of one foot in one world, one foot in another. Did you intend for this movie to also be something that in the actual making of it was a way of bringing people together? What did you learn about that and how do you see that as maybe an important byproduct of this? No, what you've seen here is the tip of the iceberg. My German producers almost had a heart attack every day. It is really difficult. But I think for me I try to raise money for a film like as a filmmaker you write a script and you try to find producers, you try to find money. And sadly in the Middle East in general people not believe in the story that much. They felt it's everyday life, there's no much conflict, films from the Middle East are very loud and there's drama and it did not have that kind of drama. So it did not have appeal to a lot of financiers in the Middle East. And then so I try to find producers out of the region and especially in Europe because there's co-production and they're interested in voices in here, in that region. And I come across, I started writing emails to every production company in the West that made, in Europe, that made the film in the Middle East. And my name is Haifa Masour, I'm a filmmaker from Saudi Arabia. And you know exactly where that email goes, right to the trash. But Tracer Film, and they're amazing. They did Paradise Now, What's Would Wish Here, amazing production company. They answered and I could not believe when they started jumping. And then they asked me for a synopsis and I sent a synopsis and the treatment. And I sent the script to different development places including Sundance and they've been amazing and also pushing the film through development. And that is what it makes, like sometimes in the Middle East we don't have this mentality. If someone tells us it's no, it's no. And we start complaining that we don't have cinemas and we don't know how to do. But it is always there's a solution. If you really want to do something, there's always a solution. Maybe it's difficult and daunting and exhausting. It took five years to get money for the film. But there is a way and we have to believe in that. And that is what we need, I think, in the Middle East, to change values and to embrace those values that it doesn't matter how the world around us sometimes is very, tells us something. We have to find what makes us as people happy and go for it. So why film and what was your path to deciding that film was a way of addressing these issues and how has that evolved for you? Why film? I started making films when I was working in Ramco on my previous bosses here as a female. I'm very proud that she came today. But it is a very man's world. I used to go to meetings and it's really hard for me to assert myself as fresh out of college and I felt sometimes I don't have a voice. And I wanted to make something just as a hobby, just as a therapy, just to go and do something that keeps me from thinking about work and keeps me thinking about how to promote myself and all that in that place. And I started making films and I went to festivals and I sent it to a random festival, small in Abu Dhabi. And they actually accepted the film and they said they would pay for my travels like the first time ever. Someone's paying for a ticket and I went there. What was that film about? It was, it's called, it is very small and all right. It's called Who. It's about a serial killer who started killing women and Saudi wearing the niqab and all the cover like them. And for me to say like it was a rumor in the society at the time. And for us sometimes we're really scared of things that we enforce. We have of the population in Saudi Arabia is unidentified because of that face covering and doesn't have to do with the veil. And it's alarming security wise. It's very alarming. People recognize the power of film, what film can do. And after that there are a lot of young filmmakers and Saudi Arabia started making films. So what kind of impact do you think this film has had so far? Well, I try to make films in a way that I just want to entertain people. I'm going to take my voice as a woman and as a person who wants to move beyond intolerance, move beyond everything I've been taught since I was little and break through that, shape the consciousness of people and how they think and how they, how they feel. And that is for me the biggest accomplishment of someone watching the film and just like in Saudi and went home and bought something for his daughter or understand the struggles little girls go through. And that ultimately will make us a better society, will make us more kind and more accepting and relax a little bit. So that is my aim always in making films, that to make something like this, touching, empowering. And it's hard because sometimes you don't know what is really works. But I want to tell a story that touches people and I know who my audience is, very conservative, very tribal, very, they don't accept me as a person because I go and make films. So I try to make, to tell my stories in a way that is still works within where I come from. People are still skeptical and still, but they are accepting and it's very important to show respect to the conservatives. People who are different than me, I mean. It is, they are who they are and I am who I am. And we start and we build bridges. And that is how I go. And I think there was no backlash officially or anything. The film was nominated for the first time to the Oscars by Saudi. And that was big because it was a very long process to go through the official and to go to the Ministry of Culture and then go all the channels. And sometimes going through the system, especially in bureaucratic countries like where we come from, is difficult. But if you keep working on making those systems a little bit bigger, you leave something for other people to come on. And it eventually is more effective later on. And that is, you won't change, that is effective. You don't want to be the hero and that's it. But the real hero, the person who takes everyday life and conquers it. For you, this isn't the end, this is the beginning. And I know you have another project in the work just quickly, give folks an idea of what you're doing next so we can all be ready to support that too. Oh yeah. I'm working on my first film in LA in Hollywood and dependent Hollywood, not studio or anything. It's about Mary Shelley's life and how she, it's amazing when they send me the script and she's the mother of Comic-Con and she left this amazing legacy. But when I read her life, very similar to my life when I grew up in Saudi. She grew up in England when it was very conservative and women were expected to act and be in a certain way. And I connected with her story right away. And after here, I'm going to Sundance to receive the Global Filmmaker Award. Yeah. Well, let's give her, unfortunately, we've got to close. This was too short of time, but I think this is a wonderful example of how art does open up the spaces for conversation that are sometimes difficult to do otherwise. Thanks again to IEPO for giving us this gift of your film.