Sunday Review: Wadjda

Saudi Arabian firsts

By Morris Dean

Wadjda (2012 [2013, US], in Arabic with English subtitles) is the first feature film made in Saudi Arabia, and its writer-director, Haifaa al-Mansour, is the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia. She had to go elsewhere for the education she wanted (in literature at the American University in Cairo, and in directing and film studies at the University of Sydney), and elsewhere to work with and learn from professional filmmakers.
    When al-Mansour returned with a German film crew to shoot Wadjda in the streets of the Saudi capital Riyadh, she had to stay out of sight much of time, communicating with her actors by way of a megaphone or through an assistant. If she did venture out she had to be ready to cover her head with a scarf at sight of an approaching car.

Wadjda's mother goes shopping

    The film's main actor is Waad Mohammed, who plays the 11-year-old Saudi girl Wadjda. We see her with her mother mainly at home and on their rooftop; at her all-girls school, where the main curriculum is religion and morals; along streets and in city lots with her male friend Abdullah; and often visiting a shop that has a bicycle she wants to buy.

Walking to school one morning, Wadjda says to Abdullah, who is riding his ever-present bicycle, "I could beat you, if I had a bicycle." But in Saudi Arabia girls don't ride bicycles (and they don't play with boys). That is, those are the rules, as Wadjda's teacher likes to remind her.
    But Wadjda is intent on following her heart and her mind and never makes even a show of following these rules, although she has a wary eye open for the "religious police." (The actor, Waad, has revealed that she too plays with boys and rides bicycles, which might be partly why everyone knew they had their Wadjda when Waad appeared less than two weeks before filming began.)
    Much of the action of the film involves Wadjda's schemes for accumulating the 800 riyal (about $220) she needs to purchase the bicycle, including her disingenuous plan to compete in her school's Qur'an recital competition, whose cash prize is 1000 riyal.
    For me, as you may have guessed, the bicycle is a symbol for something like the freedom women need to excel and come into their own. And not only in Saudi Arabia....
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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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