Reem Al Habib came to Deadline’s studio at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia and told us about her mission to open up the range of roles for female actors in the Kingdom and beyond.
Al Habib said that having made a her own punchy web series as far back as 2012, a dearth of decent roles almost made her leave the business. “There was a moment in my career where I was literally questioning if I still wanted to be an actress, because of the roles that are given to females in region.”
There is change for the better, however, Al Habib added, signposting a couple of roles and projects. The first is Al Dariya for local streaming service Shahid. The other was Saudi psychological thriller The Matchmaker, produced by Telfaz11 for Netflix. “It was really different, and it was one of the things I fell in love with. Okay, a female can come out of her regular skin [of being] just a wife or a daughter or a sister.”
Al Habib was part of the cohort of Saudi Future Filmmakers program launched by Netflix, Sard, and NEOM. She teased a new project she is putting together and hoping to shoot in 2026. She will write and showrun the series, which she has written. “We’re working on developing this show, a crazy series, something different that you probably have never seen in this region. It’s drama-action; think of Queen Of The South meets Dexter.”
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The Red Sea International Film Festival runs through Dec. 13.