Wadjda goin' to watch?" Padma asked me last night, just after I'd eaten my bangers and mash and washed them down with a glass of Chateau Cardboard. I replied, "Yes!"
"Wadjda" is the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and was made by that nation’s first female director, Haifaa Al Mansour. It's a winning and wonderfully moving tale of a 10-year-old girl, living in a suburb of Riyadh, making her voice heard in that patriarchal society.
The girl wants a bicycle so she can race against a boy called Abdullah – except, of course, in Saudi Arabia girls aren’t allowed to ride bicycles any more than they are allowed to drive cars. Wadjda’s mother won’t let her daughter have a bicycle and the girl decides to raise the money to buy one herself.
Haifaa al Mansour admits that she got death threats for her work and says that she had to spend much of the location shoot directing from inside a van. Nothing new here, although the scenery is new to me as I had never been to Riyadh except through it on my way from Bahrain to Jeddah.
