Haifaa al-Mansour (Arabic: هيفاء المنصور Hayfā'a al-Manṣūr; born 10 August 1974) is a Saudi Arabian film director.

[1][2] Haifaa is the eighth (out of twelve)[3] children of the poet Abdul Rahman Mansour, who introduced her to films by video, there being no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia between 1983 and 2018.

Since cinema was banned in Saudi Arabia, Haifaa and her family received lots of judgment and threats from the people in her conservative town, but this never stopped her father from raising her and the other children to do things they felt passionate about.

[4] After school, Haifaa worked at an oil company and taught English, she later completed a master's degree in Film Studies from University of Sydney, Australia.

The segregation of men and women in Saudi Arabia forced her to direct it in a small van with only a monitor and a walkie-talkie to communicate orders.

She has a supportive family, but those that surrounded her maintained the conservative politics in that town and condemned her for seeking film, using the argument that it is haram (forbidden in Islam),[citation needed] although the claim is controversial and not agreed upon by the majority of Muslims.

In 2014, it was reported that Al-Mansour was to direct A Storm in the Stars, an upcoming romantic drama film about the early life of writer Mary Shelley.

"[22] In April 2020, it was announced that she would direct Netflix's upcoming film The Selection, based on the first entry in Kiera Cass' popular book series.

[25] Al-Mansour lived in Bahrain for some years, and eventually moved to California with her husband, Bradley Niemann, an American diplomat, and their two children, Adam and Haylie.