Private Project

AZZA

SYNOPSIS
Azza had to compromise her life for others since she was a child. Rebellious as a girl she was married at 16, had four children and had no right to continue her education. Through a smart trick she managed to get divorced after years of being stuck in an abusive marriage. As a divorced woman she was banned from her family and was not allowed to see her children. Her solitude forced her into a new marriage, after which she was accepted back into her family.
As Azza is caught up by the traumas of her past, she's struggling in everyday life, but always finds a way to go on. Without a school certificate, she cannot find a job, works freelance as a driving teacher for women and is always out of money. She tries to have a career to improve her life and this of her five children. By all means she does not want her teenage daughters to experience what she went through. But she's constantly confronted with the rules of her authoritarian society.
Azza escapes on a road trip to the desert where she discovers her country and herself. Driving has become the tool to freedom, not only in Azza's life, but in most women's lives.
Shot over three years the documentary is an intimate look into the life of Azza, her native country and the changing society caught up between tradition and modernity.

  • Stefanie Brockhaus
    Director
    The Poetess, Some Things Are Hard To Talk About, On The Other Side Of Life
  • Stefanie Brockhaus
    Writer
    The Poetess, Some Things Are Hard To Talk About, On The Other Side Of Life
  • Hans Robert Eisenhauer
    Producer
    Of Fathers and Sons, Return to Homs
  • Azza Al Shareef
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 28 minutes 14 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 10, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    490 EUR
  • Country of Filming:
    Saudi Arabia
  • Language:
    Arabic, English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:2,35
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • in negotiation
Director Biography - Stefanie Brockhaus

Stefanie Brockhaus grew up in Munich. She studied Film Directing in London and in Munich.
Stefanie has realized several feature documentaries as producer and director e.g. The Poetess, Some Things Are Hard To Talk About, On The Other Side Of Life. Her work screened at international film festivals e.g. Locarno, IDFA, SXSW, CPHDox, DokLeipzig, SaoPaulo, DocAviv, Sheffield. She has won numerous awards.
Today she works as an independant filmmaker in Marseille.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

My aim was to make a film about a woman's transformation from oppression in a conservative society to her liberation in an open-minded society. I wanted to show empowerement rather than discrimination. During the three years of filming it became apparent that the traumas experienced by Azza due to an authoritarian and misogynistic society have prevented her from living her life fully. Social change is the beginning of a long process of personal liberation for women.
Despite the new rules Saudis are very afraid to speak their minds. Many fear the consequences. Nobody wants to be filmed. I spent years looking for protagonists who allowed me into their private lives and I lost many along the way. (In ‘The Poetess’, a documentary film that I shot in Saudi Arabia before ‘AZZA’, the protagonist was only allowed to be filmed with her Niqab and in a studio).
Saudi society is very private. Foreigners or non-family members are not allowed into the homes. I developed a close friendship with Azza and had access to a world that is normally closed off.
Azza wanted to show me her country and share her passions with me: Teaching women to drive and travelling to the desert. With time Azza shared the experiences of her turbulent life. Her stories painted a picture of a typical but unusual Saudi woman. Azza gives us a deep understanding of the intricate structure of Saudi heritage, family tradition, the Islamic religious state and the royal monarchy.
It is thanks to Azza's courage that we are able to accompany her in her everyday life, film with her daughters, her new husband and her father and immerse ourselves in the world of the Bedouins in the desert. In order to tell the core of Saudi culture and bring Azza's life to the surface without harming her, we do not address certain political or social aspects. I wanted to leave the audience with impressions, images and feelings about a woman's intimate journey through her life.
With her great openness and spontaneity, Azza lets us enter this world. Instead of adding information about the political, religious and social system of the country, we decided to tell the realities of Saudi Arabia from the point of view of our protagonist.
AZZA is a film encouraging the pursuit of personal freedom beyond cultures and borders.
I see the film as a modern Western set in the Arabian desert where the hero is a woman, the horse is her car, the cowboy hat is replaced by her scarf and the heroin's ability to cry protect her from pulling a gun.