Page - 86 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

86 | Milja Radovic www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 73–89 In her own words, al-Mansour wanted to be “respectful”, but at the same time she wanted to tell the story from inside and make it close to a Saudi Arabian audience.64 She is aware that change is needed, and she is pushing for those changes with opti- mism, like the character in her film. Her personal views on liberties are that women should not be marginalised and that their body and gender should not be used as a site of ideology.65 What is interesting about Wadjda is precisely this process of film creation and the ways that al-Mansour chose to deal with her subject. For the director, the creation of the film was both an exploration and an expression of an act. Through her film, al- Mansour wanted to find a voice of her own: “I was trying to find my voice; I was trying to find a space that I could inhabit as a person and express my opinions.”66 Furthermore, while Wadjda, a girl and therefore a second-class citizen, transforms into an actor, precisely through this process of creating a scene al-Mansour becomes an actor who claims rights and at the same time offers the possibility of a new society in which women are not marginalised because of their gender. The fact that the case is made subtly and that the film won over the Saudi Arabian committee that nominat- ed Wadjda for Oscar entry shows that claiming rights and peacemaking can be, and are, part of the transformative practise of activist citizenship, perhaps because the film embraced the local perspective and claimed rights from that very same position. Wadjda and her creator al-Mansour show that marginalised voices as subjects who turn into activists can subvert ideologies without creating physical conflict. The direc- tor’s search for her voice turned into an act of claiming rights that do not exist, which is activism. Coincidentally or not, in April 2013 Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on women riding bicycles. Al-Mansour evokes the need for recognition of women’s rights, a quest specific to the context from which she speaks, but she also reminds the audi- ence of women’s ultimate worth as human beings, which has a universal dimension. This quest for recognition of full humanity in the marginalised Other is ontological. CONCLUSION – CONSTITUTING THE FIGURE OF AN ACTIVIST CITIZEN The films discussed in this article (1) explore acts, activism, and the concepts of peace and reconciliation, (2) claim the right to act, and (3) are an expression of an artistic director’s autonomous act. In so doing, I argue, films capture and express activism. I further argue that the films are creative scenes through which filmmakers emerge as those who act. Through film – in the “scene” and in new subjects – actors are 64 Liston 2013. 65 Zoomin TV, 2012, First female Saudi Arabian director Haifaa Al Mansour provokes with Wadjda, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=umTe2aSioKA [accessed 28 April 2016]. 66 Lapin, Andrew, Wadjda director Haifaa Al Mansour, September 2013, http://thedissolve.com/features/ interview/168-wadjda-director-haifaa-al-mansour/ [accessed 28 April 2016].