Selves set free
The Wedding Singer's Daughter, directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, is the 16th commission from the Miu Miu Women's Tales short-film series, which each year premieres at the Venice Film Festival in September. The works invite contemporary female directors to investigate vanity and femininity in the 21st century; previous directors have included Dakota Fanning, Celia Rowlson-Hall and Chloe Sevigny.
Al-Mansour felt a wedding was the best encapsulation of Saudi Arabia today. "I always felt a wedding is like the actual mirror of society in Saudi Arabia," she explains. "We are always segregated and our societies are fragmented.
People don't really get together so much in Saudi Arabia, apart from weddings, schools, et cetera. In a society where music is illegal and forbidden, I wanted to capture that tenderness, and that kind of tension between the bigger society and people who entertain - those who are meant to bring joy and be celebrated ... but that doesn't happen so much in Saudi Arabia."
