In an audacious new film, a young woman secretly documents her preparations for escape from an arranged marriage on her smartphone
The first time Muna, the protagonist of documentary Saudi Runaway, turns the camera on herself, you can’t see her face; she’s shrouded by black cloth, the typical
fashion for a woman’s public outing in
Saudi Arabia, a country which maintains, according to
Human Rights Watch, a stance of unrelenting oppression. When she holds her phone up for what would be the social media standard mirror selfie, her reflection is doubly obscured – both her entire body and her phone are under wraps. Muna films surreptitiously, either from under her niqab, in public, or posing as a typical phone-obsessed millennial at home. The videos make her case: faced with an impending arranged marriage and a life constrained by Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system, she plans to flee the country on her honeymoon.
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