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Original name: Norah
English name: Norah
Year: 2023
Run time: 94 minutes
Language: Arabic
Type (Colour/ Black & white): Colour
Country: Saudi Arabia
Director: Tawfik Alzaidi
Producer: Tawfik Alzaidi
Cast: Yaqoub Alfarhan, Maria Bahrawi, Abdullah Alsadhan
Screenplay: Tawfik Alzaidi
Cinematographer: Shaun Harley Lee
Editor: Mounir Soussi
Music Composer: Omar Fadel
Costume Designer: Phaedra Dahdaleh
Production Designer: Rand Abdel Nour
Production Company: TwentyOne Entertainment, Black Sugar Pictures
World Sales: Cercamon
Tawfik Alzaidi is a Saudi director, based in Riyadh. He wrote, directed and produced Norah, his homegrown debut feature film. Tawfik is considered to be a leading and influential member of the new cinema wave in Saudi Arabia. Tawfik began directing his own short films in 2006. His first short film “The Fabricated Crime” won best editing in the Jeddah Film Festival in 2007 and his film The Silence won the Gulf Short Film Award in the Muscat International Film Festival 2009.
Set in a small remote Saudi Arabian village, in the 90s when artistic expression was banned, Norah is a story about the basic human need to communicate through art, in all its forms. Nader, a new schoolteacher and an artist in secret, arrives at the village and meets Norah, a young woman who ignites the creativity inside him and inspires him to paint again. At great risk, they develop a delicate connection and a quiet bond. Nader enlightens Norah on the wider world outside of her tiny community and she realises she must leave, to find a place where she can be free to express her artistic self.
