10-year-old Wadjda lives in Saudi Arabia. She's a bit rebellious, which means she wears basket shoes in school, listens to Western rock at home and has befriended a boy her own age. But she mustn't sing too loud, because the men can hear her and get offended.

Wadjda wants to go further and have her own bicycle, which invites trouble in her country. The story is told in a very warm way and you learn one thing. People in cultures totally different from yours are very much like you.

Realism here. Everyday people having everyday problems, but not the problems you have. A humanistic film, which makes it concerning everybody.

Wadjda is a film written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. What makes this very unusual is that this is the first full-length movie made in Saudi Arabia AND Haifaa is a woman. Apparently, she got approval from the powers that be and my daughter read that she went to extraordinary lengths to get the film made. For example, she was not able to talk directly to some of the crew since they were men and she reportedly needed to communicate with them by phone. My assumption is that Wajdja is a film that illustrates, in a gentle way, the difficulties Haifaa has experienced in her native land. The film manages to address difficulties and sexism that women face due to the culture—but in a gentle manner that was still allowable within their society.

Wadjda is a young girl (about 10) and she isn't quite like other girls. By Saudi standards, she is a bit of a tom-boy and her greatest desire in life is to get a bicycle—although she is repeatedly told that girls do NOT ride bicycles! So, she devises a plan to buy her own bike. But, being a kid, she obviously cannot afford it and takes to making money through odd jobs. However, when she learns about a Koran scholarship competition, Wadjda sees this as a chance to earn a lot of money. And, this spunky kid works very, very hard. What's going to happen? See the film.

I enjoyed this film on two entirely different levels. On one hand, she's a cute kid and you really are pulling for her. Her story captures your heart. On the other, it's a fascinating look into Arabian society— something you rarely ever get to see. Very well done and very engaging— I sure hope we see more from these folks.

In a year where Quvenzhané Wallis became one of youngest Oscar nominees of all time, there's still at least 2 other lead performances by very young girls that deserve an equal amount of recognition. One is Onata Aprile in "What Maisie Knew". The other is Waad Mohammed in "Wadjda". The existence and quality of the latter film is quite a miracle. It premiered in Venice last year, where the director and lead actress had a bike with them on the red carpet, and, since then won quite an impressive collection of honors from festivals all over the planet. The movie industry in Saudi-Arabia is practically non-existent to this day, so the creation and shooting of the film ran permanently into obstacles, especially as it's the first Saudi-Arabian movie ever filmed by a woman, but the final result is definitely worth all the hassle. I'm happy to see that just a day ago or two, this film got the honor of being the very first film from Saudi-Arabia that got submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and will compete for the foreign language Oscar in about 6 months from now.

In the center of it, we have Waad Mohammed playing a headstrong little girl named Wadjda. We see her everyday-life at an all-girls school and at home with her mother, whose approach to life clearly seems to have rubbed off on her. Haifaa Al-Mansour depicts the life of females in Saudi-Arabia in a very compelling manner. The best thing about the film is that all the examples of discrimination and misogyny are either very subtle or in a manner that isn't remotely instigative or in the viewer's face at all, for example in the scene where those girls that are on their period have to cover their hands before touching their Korans. But they are not shocked as a reaction, they're giggling just like kids would in this scenario. The director went for realism and quiet convincibility throughout the whole film, such as when Wadjda has her dream crushed towards the end we don't get to see a huge breakdown or tears, but instead she stands there suffering quietly, which is as least as sad to watch.

In addition to those parts relevant to current society issues in Saudi-Arabia, the film is also genuinely funny on lots of parts. The ways in which Wadjda tries to get together the money in order to realize her dream of getting that beautiful green bike are a riot and so are her conversations with her mother and her friend Abdullah. It's simply impossible to resist her and her highly-infectious smile and that goes for everybody in the cinema audience as well as everybody she interacts with in the film. I recommend this film very much. It's an impressive result looking at the struggles during its shooting and the fact that literally none of the actors had any previous experience in the profession at all. Beyond Mohammed in the lead, we also get convincing portrayals of grown women by those actresses who play the mother and the headmistress.