I'm torn between thinking that the first ever fully Saudi film, and the first ever Saudi film to be directed by a woman, ought to be of rather more substance than this pleasant light-hearted drama, and thinking that this is precisely the right tone to strike if you want to reach the masses. Since Venice and Telluride last year, this has been doing the festival rounds, and will be released in the UK on the 19th of July.
It's an absolutely beautiful film in every sense, and for me the very best film of the recent Tribeca Film Festival. Wadjda features a 10-year-old Saudi girl (Waad Mohammad in a remarkable and brave performance) who badly desires a bicycle and can’t understand why boys can have and ride them, but girls cannot. Wadjda enters a Koran-memorization contest hoping to use the prize money to buy a bicycle to race against a neighbor boy. The film such issues as child marriage, polygamy and intimidation by it’s perhaps most importantly about the first concessions by one of the world’s most conservative and repressive societies. It is the first feature-length film directed by a Saudi woman, Haifaa al-Mansour, and the first produced entirely in Saudi Arabia. It has been reported that al-Mansour wore a black hijab -the traditional Arabic head-dress, and directed from inside a van issuing instructions to the actors and craftsman from within. The film is beautifully framed, pictorially elegant and packs an emotional wallop that is both inspirational and hopeful. Even as women continue to be denied voting privileges, and all decisions surrounding travel, work, admission to a hospital and marriage and divorce must receive male approval, there are signs that changes are forthcoming. This isn't the first film in the history of cinema where a bicycle is the central symbol, but it may be the first time the world’s most popular mode of transportation is a catalyst for change. Wadjda is a work of art.
ReplyDeleteWell, with that glowing report, I'm very much looking forward to seeing it. I had read something about the circumstances under which Haifaa Al-Mansour directed the film. Pretty astonishing!
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