THE STORY – The latest from Saudi Arabian director Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda) is a crime thriller that challenges simplistic narratives of femicide and transgresses all manner of jurisdiction in its dogged pursuit of justice.
THE CAST – Mila Alzahrani, Shafi Alharthi, Aziz Gharbawi, Othoub Sharar, Adwa Alasiri & Abdullah Alqahtani
THE TEAM – Haifaa Al Mansour (Director/Writer), Brad Niemann (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 minutes
There’s a haunting stillness to the opening of Haifaa Al Mansour’s “Unidentified” – a young woman’s lifeless body dumped in the vast Saudi desert, her killer speeding away in a cloud of dust. The wind howls. The score hums with quiet dread. It’s a moment heavy with the fear that this girl’s death might join a long list of unnamed, unclaimed, and ultimately forgotten victims. But in Al Mansour’s gripping, if uneven, feminist crime thriller, forgetting is not an option – not for its protagonist, and not for us. With a sharp performance from Mila Alzahrani and a timely interrogation of justice in a patriarchal society, “Unidentified” is more than a murder mystery. It’s a slow-burning, determined act of defiance.
Nawal (Alzahrani), recently divorced and living on her own in Riyadh with boxes still unpacked, spends her days digitizing police files and her nights obsessing over true crime YouTube videos that offer forensic insights between makeup tutorials. Her life takes a sharp turn when the police chief, unexpectedly in need of a female presence at a crime scene, invites her to the desert to help examine the body from that chilling opening. It’s here that Nawal steps out of the copy room and into the shadows of a much darker Saudi Arabia – one where girls go missing without notice and silence often speaks louder than justice.
One of the film’s quiet triumphs is how it renders Nawal’s obsessive determination. She’s not a trained detective, but she listens more closely than the men around her, seeing the unseen. Her empathy becomes her superpower. As she digs into the identity of the victim – an anonymous “Jane Doe” likely headed to an unmarked grave – Nawal finds herself speaking with uncooperative school principals, frightened friends, and apathetic officials. In one particularly biting scene, a school administrator says, “Do you know how many of our girls go missing every week?” The implication is chilling: whether they’ve dropped out, disappeared, or died, society barely registers their absence.
And yet, “Unidentified” isn’t just a story of a tenacious amateur sleuth. It’s about a society that too often prioritizes the appearance of honor over the pursuit of truth. We learn that the crime at the heart of her investigation may not lie in the act itself, but in how families – terrified of public shame – respond to perceived transgressions. This adds a compelling and culturally specific angle to the typical true crime formula.
Then comes the ending. Without giving it away, let’s just say that “Unidentified” takes a late-stage detour that may divide audiences. What begins as a quietly radical procedural grounded in emotional truth and social realism suddenly embraces a twist that feels jarring, almost sensational. While undeniably shocking, it risks undermining the story’s slower, more impactful revelations. It’s the kind of finale that makes you rethink the entire movie, not necessarily for the better. What could have ended poignantly, with Nawal alone in the desert, symbolically letting go, continues into a head-spinning final act that fails to convince us of its truth in the story.
The filmmaking itself is pedestrian at times, and some dream sequences and flashbacks (especially to Nawal’s failed marriage and the loss of her baby) feel unnecessary, as dialogue and Alzahrani’s expressive performance convey everything we need. Still, the film remains engrossing, largely because of Nawal herself. As a character, she’s complex, resilient, and unrelenting, refusing to be sidelined in a world that would rather she stay quiet. Her bond with the police chief, who watches the same crime videos as she does, albeit not for the makeup, is a surprisingly tender detail, hinting at the slow shifts happening even within entrenched systems.
“Unidentified” uses the familiar framework of a murder mystery to tell a deeply political story about autonomy, visibility, and the high cost of speaking up. Even when the plot stumbles, the message never does. In a world that forgets girls like the one in the desert, Nawal – and by extension, Al Mansour – refuses to let us forget.
