Saudi filmmakers highlight vital mental health issues on-screen

Saudi filmmakers highlight vital mental health issues on-screen

RIYADH: Mental health is still often considered a taboo subject in the region and across the world, with explanations ranging from the superstitious to the criminal, but it is now being highlighted and normalized by Saudi filmmakers with their movies and television shows. In her most recent work, Saudi writer, director, and actress Sarah Taibah packs a collection of laughs, empathy, and thought-provoking elements into the TV series “Jameel Jeddan.” The show is a coming-of-age story that takes viewers on a journey of love, trauma, and loss, to ultimately accepting reality, alongside quirky anime references and challenging of stigmas. Taibah plays the main character, Jameel, who wakes up from a five-year coma and is forced to finish her last year at high school, rejoining a society with which she no longer identifies. As a coping mechanism, she begins to form an animated alternative reality. “I think mental health is a very private experience that one battles with on a daily basis, secretly, without necessarily sharing it,” Taibah told Arab News. She believes it’s important for films and shows to feature protagonists struggling with mental health issues — “something very relatable yet misunderstood in society.” What Taibah and fellow filmmaker and