Film No. 28 (2014) April 21st. 10:30 AM LUNA SX Fremantle.
Wadjda
Sometimes a film made in a small country with an even smaller film industry use Hollywood cliches because they know no better. Not Wadjda, the first feature length film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, it is a gem! There is nothing blockbuster about it. Haifaa Al-Mansour takes her audience to her country to give us a sense of what it's like to be a muslim woman.
Waad Mohammed plays Wadjda and shows her to be a feisty 10 year old with plans and ambitions. She fights against wearing a veil, she detests the way men treat her mother, she plays out a warm friendship with a boy, but most of all she wants to ride a bike, her own bike. She wants to race faster than her "boyfriend" Abdullah.
On finding the bike of her dreams, we "ride" with Wadjda through the maze of her culture's conflicting expectations and the determined approach she has in her quest to prove her own independence.
The film is a credit to Al-Mansour, who leant much of her craft here in Australia and like Wadjda would have stepped on forbidden ground to have the film distributed world wide. She gives us a sense of her dry, wind swept land via the simplest of tales. 10GUMS
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