The Perfect Candidate

3/27/2020

The first Saudi woman to direct a feature film (“Wadjda”), Haifaa Al-Mansour, brings her unique voice and perspective to her follow-up movie, “The Perfect Candidate,” the story of a female doctor who decides to run for a local political office. The film lends an insider’s look at life in modern-day Saudi Arabia and the changing role of women in a country known for its restrictive gender customs. Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani) is an ambitious young doctor working in a small town medical clinic. She’s well-educated and smart, yet she gets daily pushback from many of her male patients and has to work twice as hard to earn the respect of her male colleagues. After she is prevented from traveling to Dubai in search of a better job, a paperwork mix-up leads Maryam to become a candidate for her loca