‘Unidentified’ review: Haifaa Al Mansour’s Saudi thriller sees a grieving woman turn detective

Dir: Haifaa Al Mansour. Saudi Arabia. 2025. 99 mins.

Pioneering Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda) returns with another female-led, Saudi-set drama. A young woman who is reeling from the death of her newborn baby and the subsequent divorce from her husband, Nawal (Mila Alzahrani) is fascinated with true-crime podcasts. Then her hobby tips over into a real-life obsession: through her admin work at a local police station in Riyadh she is sent to the crime scene when an unidentified female body is found abandoned in the desert. Using intuition and determination she sets out to find the girl’s family in this taut but slightly soapy crime thriller.

A smarter, trickier piece of storytelling than it initially seems

With Unidentified, which plays Zurich following its Toronto premiere, Al Mansour ventures into a more mainstream and commercial filmmaking register; a contrast to the crowd-pleasing arthouse appeal of her debut and breakout success, Wadjda. The style of filmmaking here can feel rather pulpy, but the knotty complexity of the plotting and – in particular – of the central character, adds texture and interest. Sony Pictures Classics holds the rights for multiple territories including North America Australia and New Zealand; several European territories also presold in advance of the film’s world premiere.

In the demanding central role of Nawal, Mila Alzahrani – reteaming with Al Mansour following her starring role in 2019’s A Perfect Candidate – is a magnetic, slightly troubling presence. Asked to attend the crime scene – a woman needs to be present in the case of a female body – Nawal immediately identifies with the dead girl. “She could have had my life”, she says repeatedly, a curious choice of wording that takes on an added significance by the film’s twisty final reveal. Her grief over the death of her baby daughter (in a pointedly unsubtle piece of production design, a pair of baby’s shoes hangs from the rear view mirror in her car) drives her to covertly investigate the case. The dead girl was someone’s child, after all; another mother must be grieving for her lost daughter. 

But Nawal finds resistance at every juncture: her kindly boss, whose nickname for her is “The Executioner”, warns her not to meddle in an active crime scene. And the principals of the girls’ schools that she visits to discover the young woman’s identity are openly hostile. There’s a shame attached to this tragic death, a sense that, to have ended up abandoned in the sand, the girl must have somehow transgressed.

Still, Nawal has a knack for police work, part of which results from her avid fandom of a popular crime podcast that bizarrely juxtaposes make-up tips with cold case investigations. The presenter breezily segues between a discussion of eye-bag concealers and incidences of femicide, to unintentionally disquieting effect. 

Skewed, off-kilter camera angles and God’s eye overhead shots bring a sense of unease to the picture. It’s an atmosphere that is bolstered by the score’s liberal use of generic suspense music. More effective as a dramatic device is the use of stencilled religious street art: “From God We Come And To God We Will Return” appears on a sign tacked to a post near where the body is found. Eagle-eyed Nawal notices more of these messages and links them to a male teenager, who becomes a suspect in the case. 

There is a twist at the very end that adds a new layer of intrigue to the picture; it is a smarter, trickier piece of storytelling than it initially seems. But this last minute reveal also calls into question elements of the plot that came before and some actions of key characters. Ultimately, the picture is entertaining enough, in a somewhat tawdry way. Just do not expect it to hold up to forensic scrutiny.