Wadjda


Wadjda is a 2012 Saudi Arabian drama film, written and directed by Haifaa al-Mansour. It was the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first feature-length film made by a female Saudi director. It won numerous awards at film festivals around the world. The film was selected as the Saudi Arabian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. It successfully earned a nomination for Best Foreign Film at the 2014 BAFTA Awards.

Plot

In the 2000s, Wadjda, a spirited 10-year-old Saudi girl living in the capital Riyadh, dreams of owning a green bicycle that she passes at a store every day on her way to school. She wants to race against her friend Abdullah, a boy from her neighborhood, but riding bikes is frowned upon for girls and Wadjda's mother refuses to buy one for her. The bike is expensive, costing SR800.
Wadjda begins to earn the money herself by selling mixtapes, hand-braiding bracelets for classmates and acting as a go-between for an older student. These activities get her into trouble with the strict headmistress. Her mother, meanwhile, is dealing with a job that has a terrible commute with a driver who often gets angry with her for making him wait. He tells Wadjda's mother that he will no longer drive her to work, but Wadjda and Abdullah find where the man lives and visit his house to tell him to take her mother's business. After Abdullah threatens to have his "uncle with the moustache" kick the man out of the country, the driver agrees.
Meanwhile, Wadjda's grandmother on her father's side is looking for a second wife for her son because Wadjda's mother cannot have any more children and he wants a son. Wadjda's mother is angry and scared by this, so she tries on a beautiful red dress for her brother-in-law's wedding to gain support and to "scare off" any potential women who may consider marrying her husband.
At school, Wadjda decides to participate in a Quran recital competition featuring a SR1,000 cash prize. Meanwhile, two girls at the Madrasa are accused of having a lesbian relationship by the headmistress and shunned by other students, though they were only reading magazines. Wadjda's efforts at memorization impress her teacher, and she wins the competition. The staff and students are shocked when Wadjda announces her intention to buy a bicycle with the prize money. She is told by the headmistress that the money will instead be donated to Palestine on her behalf.
She returns home to find her father and begins crying when he says he is proud that she won the competition. However, he does not talk to her long. He tells Wadjda to tell her mother that he loves her and leaves the home while taking a phone call. Later, Wadjda finds out that her father has taken a second wife, and she watches the wedding ceremony from her roof with her mother. Wadjda suggests that her mother could buy the red dress and win her father back again, but her mother reveals her that she has instead spent the money on the green bike her daughter wanted. The two hug as fireworks from the wedding light up the night sky behind them.
The next day, Wadjda rides down the street on her new bike. The owner of the bike shop sees her passing and smiles. She races against Abdullah and wins.

Cast

According to the director Haifaa al-Mansour, it took five years to make Wadjda. She spent most of the time trying to find financial backing and getting filming permission, since she insisted on filming in Saudi Arabia for reasons of authenticity. She received backing from Rotana, the film production company of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. However, she very much wanted to find a foreign co-producer because "in Saudi there are no movie theatres, there is no film industry to speak of and, therefore, little money for investment". After her selection for a Sundance Institute writer's lab in Jordan, al-Mansour got in touch with the German production company Razor Film, which had previously produced films with Middle-Eastern topics. The production involved co-operation with two German public TV broadcasters, Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Bayerischer Rundfunk. Additional funding came from ; Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH ; Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung GmbH ; and Filmfonds Babelsberg.
Al-Mansour's screenplay was influenced by neorealist cinema like Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, Jafar Panahi's Offside or Rosetta. The final scene recalls the final scene of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows. Al-Mansour says that the original version of her screenplay was much bleaker than the finished product: "I decided I didn't want the film to carry a slogan and scream, but just to create a story where people can laugh and cry a little." Al-Mansour based the character of Wadjda on one of her nieces and also on her own experiences when growing up. The main themes of the story are freedom, as represented by the bicycle, and the fear of emotional abandonment, as Wadjda's father wants to take a second wife who will provide him with a son.
Wadjda was filmed on the streets of Riyadh, which often made it necessary for the director to work from the back of a van, as she could not publicly mix with the men in the crew. Often, she could only communicate via walkie-talkie and had to watch the actors on a monitor. This made it difficult to direct: "It made me realise the need to rehearse and to develop an understanding for each scene before we shot it."
Waad Mohammed, who plays Wadjda, was a first-time actress.

Reception

Wadjda received critical acclaim. The film-critics aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reported 99% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 102 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. The critical consensus is: "Transgressive in the best possible way, Wadjda presents a startlingly assured new voice from a corner of the globe where cinema has been all but silenced." Metacritic, which assigns a standardized score out of 100, rated the film 81 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Film critics cite the ways Wadjda is able to grapple with important societal issues, while also accurately understanding the limits of large scale change. NY Times Film critic A.O. Scott states, "With impressive agility, Wadjda finds room to maneuver between harsh realism and a more hopeful kind of storytelling"; it accurately shows the immense challenges women face in Saudi Arabia, while also showing that there is room for change and growth. New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane feels similarly, as he argues that there are many ways Wadjda could have done more of a disservice to women in Saudi Arabia, rather than helping expose their inequality. He says that Wadjda strikes the right balance, in that it is enjoyable to watch, while also effective in calling for social change.

Release

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August 2012. It was released in Germany by Koch Media in 2013. Other distributors are: Pretty Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, Wild Bunch Benelux, The Match Factory and Soda Pictures. It has been shown at several film festivals:
CountryRelease DateFilm Festival or full releaseNote
Italy31 August 2012Venice Film Festival
USA15 September 2012Telluride Film Festival
Poland28 November 2012Filmy Swiata ale kino+ Festival
Iceland29 November 2012Fully
Italy6 December 2012Fully
Netherlands26 January 2013International Film Festival Rotterdam
Sweden30 January 2013Goteborg International Film Festival
Belgium6 February 2013Fully
France6 February 2013Fully
Serbia23 February 2013Belgrade Film Festival
Sweden8 March 2013Fully
Netherlands16 May 2013Fully
Spain21 June 2013 in festival,
as of 28 June 2013 at movie theaters		Festival Internacional de Cinema de València - Cinema Jove
UK19 July 2013Fully
Germany25 July 2013Fünf-Seen-Filmfestival
Germany15 August 2013Fully

Other screenings include as the opening film of the 6th Gulf Film Festival in Dubai and at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The film was scheduled to be released on DVD in February 2014.

Awards