When Haifaa al-Mansour’s agent first brought her the offer for her latest movie, an origins tale about Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, the 43-year-old director was perplexed. “I was like, ‘What? I’m from Saudi Arabia, and this is a period movie in English and I don’t know,’” al-Mansour said. But when she read about Shelley, whose authorship of the 1818 gothic novel was questioned because of her sex, al-Mansour found parallels to her own life growing up in one of the most conservative societies in the world, where women just earned the right to vote in 2015 and the right to drive in 2018. “It reminded me of home somehow,” al-Mansour said. “Like when they expect women to be a certain way, their voices are taken for granted. I really connected with Mary Shelley.”

Al-Mansour is Saudi Arabia’s most famous director, a remarkable feat in a country where both her gender and her art form have been severely restricted. Wadjda, a tender drama about a 10-year-old girl who enrolls in a Koran-recitation competition to win money for a bicycle she’s forbidden to ride, was the kingdom’s first submission to the Academy Awards, in 2012. Mary Shelley, which stars Elle Fanning as the Frankenstein author, opened in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on May 25 and is available on demand as of June 1.

Now, as Saudi Arabia lifts its 35-year-old ban on movie theaters, al-Mansour, a petite, sneaker-wearing mother of two, is positioned to become in effect an ambassador between Hollywood and Riyadh. In April, she was one of three women invited to join the kingdom’s General Authority for Culture, a government body devoted to developing new arts-and-entertainment sectors. The invitation arrived as tickets to Disney’s Black Panther sold out in 15 minutes at a new theater in Riyadh, and as Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (or “M.B.S.,” as he’s called), came to Los Angeles for meetings as part of a broader P.R. and investor-relations effort. His reopening of movie theaters is a welcome reform within Saudi Arabia and abroad, but M.B.S. is a leader with a complex profile, who has detained many of his political adversaries and backed a proxy war in Yemen with regional rival Iran. For Hollywood, there is a financial incentive to look past any reservations about the regime: estimates project a reopened Saudi box office to represent $1 billion in revenue by the year 2030, and Rupert Murdoch, Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger, William Morris Endeavor boss Ari Emanuel, and Oprah Winfrey were among those on M.B.S.’s L.A. itinerary.

For al-Mansour, the opening of her country to movies is a step in its possible evolution, one which has geopolitical ramifications throughout the region and beyond. “I’m progressive and liberal. I’m not that typical Saudi,” she said in a recent interview over tea near where she lives in California’s San Fernando Valley. “So it’s just wonderful that they chose me to be in this very high position. Saudi Arabia sets the tone for the rest of the Muslim world. If Saudi starts exporting ideas with art and cinema, that definitely will see a shift in all those radical conservative societies.”

The eighth of 12 children of a Saudi poet, al-Mansour grew up between Riyadh and Al-Hasa in the east, where her family moved when her father took consulting work in the oil industry. In an ultra-conservative environment, her mother wore a lighter veil than was expected, an act of quiet defiance that embedded itself in al-Mansour’s consciousness. “Everybody would be talking about her, that she’s very proud of who she is, and she doesn’t want to hide it,” al-Mansour said. “As a kid I was always embarrassed. This woman, I have nothing to do with her. I was always running away when she came to my school. But things like this make me stronger now. I appreciate it a lot better. What she did made me realize how important it is to be true to yourself and not to follow whatever is around you if it is limiting, if it is not right.”