Wadjda
Wadjda Image
Metascore
81

Universal acclaim - based on 23 Critics What's this?

User Score
9.0

Universal acclaim- based on 5 Ratings

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  • Starring:
  • Summary: An enterprising Saudi girl signs up for her school's Koran recitation competition in hopes of raising the remaining funds she needs to buy a green bicycle she desperately wants.

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Bruce Ingram
    Sep 19, 2013
    100
    Al-Mansour has managed to embue Wadjda with a hopeful spirit, partially because she takes time to show women finding ways to be themselves in private moments. And partially because she suggests with a few subtle touches that the situation might be slowly improving.
  2. The Dissolve
    Reviewed by: Andrew Lapin
    Sep 12, 2013
    90
    Wadjda is an object of stark beauty, an oasis of free-spirited cinema emerging from the desert.
  3. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Randy Cordova
    Oct 9, 2013
    90
    The movie’s best moments are the small ones.
  4. Total Film
    Reviewed by: Kevin Harley
    Aug 20, 2013
    80
    Al-Mansour carefully dodges easy uplift, but her message of hope to future generations of Saudi women is clear.
  5. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    Sep 16, 2013
    80
    Al Mansour is too smart to overdo the symbolic spin, but the thrust of her film, toward the end, could hardly be more urgent. [16 Sept. 2013, p. 72]
    All this critic's reviews
  6. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jordan Hoffman
    Sep 12, 2013
    80
    This resonant film, detailing struggles in a far-flung place, represents world cinema in the classic sense.
  7. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: R. Kurt Osenlund
    Sep 10, 2013
    50
    It doesn't play like reality, but like boilerplate filmic fantasy, and its novel setting and inception struggles seem positioned as a beard--or veil, if you will--to mask its mediocrity.

See all 23 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. theseparator
    Sep 21, 2013
    8
    The total lack of films that come out of Saudi Arabia made Wadjda, a Saudi film by Haiffa Al-Mansour, instantly alluring. Haiffa Al-Mansour is already credited as being the first successful woman filmmaker in Saudi Arabia’s history.

    The precocious 10-year Wadjda is growing up in Riyadh where she wants nothing more than a shiny new bicycle, but not only is she a little short on riyals, in Saudi Arabia women do not to ride bicycles. Saudi moral code bans woman from driving, going out in public unveiled, living unaccompanied, leaving the country alone, and opposing their husband’s orders in any way.

    This is very much Al- Mansour’s film. She charms the viewer with the common everyday struggles of the Saudi woman, and rather than address the issues in a combative way, her approach is warm, even cute. This draws us in to her characters and provides us with some heartfelt laughs along the way.
    Small details make grand impressions: In an all girls school teenage students paint their toenails, a sin, and are publicly vilified for it. The mere possibly that workmen half a mile away might see school girls playing in their courtyard forces all the girls to rush inside, lest they be judged impure. Pubescent girls are considered impure and must use a tissue just flip the pages of Koran.

    Wadjad’s truly beautiful mother spends much of her time perfecting her appearance only then to have to then cover herself with a full hijab. She is never openly defiant; defiance is impossible, but even thought she is obeying age old traditions that we’d assume would have dulled any emotional protest, through the mother’s submission we get a brief glimpse of her distress, the natural human emotional distress that no amount of “aged tradition” or religious subjugation has the right to inflict on any human being.

    In a country where cinemas are banned, Riyadh is not exactly a city where women can just go around shooting films. Females mixing with male co-workers would bring dire consequences. Al-Mansour shot the film anyway, directing much of it from the back of a van, and the result is a film representing the triumph of the defiant feminine spirit, in all forms.    … Expand

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