Five-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams joined us at our Deadline Red Sea Film Festival studio this week to discuss regional change, the role cinema played in her education as an actress and her next project: FX limited series Dying For Sex, which we detailed yesterday.

The Fabelmans and Brokeback Mountain actress told us she was moved to come to the Saudi Arabian festival given the amount of societal change underway in the country and the event’s foregrounding of female creatives.

“I was moved when I read about how quickly change has come to the region,” she said. “I was curious to see what the energy was like here and the people behind that change…A festival that is featuring 38 filmmakers, that’s not a token, that’s a movement. I want to come here and listen. That was my agenda. To listen to the women and men who are working here and making cinema.