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Wadjda

Play trailer Poster for Wadjda PG 2013 1h 38m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
99% Tomatometer 122 Reviews 88% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
A rebellious Saudi girl (Waad Mohammed) enters a Koran recitation competition at her school and hopes to win enough money to buy her own bicycle.
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Wadjda

Wadjda

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Critics Consensus

Transgressive in the best possible way, Wadjda presents a startlingly assured new voice from a corner of the globe where cinema has been all but silenced.

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Critics Reviews

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Sarah Mirk Bitch Media 01/20/2021
Wadjda builds a complex portrait of a place and people around a simple story. Go to Full Review
Deborah Ross The Spectator 09/05/2018
Though people will talk about how it breaks boundaries and how pioneering it is, that's not what you most need to know. What you most need to know is that it's fascinating, involving, moving, an entirely excellent film in its own right. Go to Full Review
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh metro.co.uk 09/05/2017
4/5
Determinedly non-preachy, non-bitter and rapturously uplifting. Go to Full Review
Annlee Ellingson CineWomen 07/29/2024
[Director Haifaa] Al-Mansour doesn’t explain the particulars of Saudi culture for Western viewers. Rather, she drops us in, sans exposition, to experience and piece it together ourselves. Go to Full Review
Emiliano Basile EscribiendoCine 03/14/2023
7/10
Fortunately, Wadjda goes beyond the simple delineation of a quotidian drama about a foreign culture that's hard to understand and does so through the protagonist's hope and optimism. [Full review in Spanish] Go to Full Review
Josh Long Battleship Pretension 02/24/2021
Films like these are insightful and useful instruments for change. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Kyle M Jul 5 Whether it’s critically transgressive in anosognosia need for societal progression or simply a coming-of-age slice of life, under normal circumstances, about an innocent wish, which is routine elsewhere, this film’s ideally led with performative charm for aligned empathy to reaffirm the underlying heartening faith through such intolerable distress. (B) See more Dustin D 02/17/2022 Wadjda does an admirable job showing how religion, modernity and gender roles clash while also balancing respect for the culture. See more 12/15/2021 جميل جدا قصة من الواقع في كل تفاصيلها See more 06/11/2021 Wadjda is a story that does brilliantly to lift this issue up to our faces, and allow us to see the world from Muslim women's eyes. See more Taylor L 06/05/2021 Wadjda will probably be remembered more for its place in the development of a new international film industry than it will as an innovative film unto itself. One of the first Saudi films shot almost entirely domestically, and by a female director, Wadjda delivers a story that focuses on an independently-minded young girl in the suburbs of Riyadh that doesn't conform to the standards of Islamic orthodoxy, attempting to scrounge together cash to purchase a bike (which carries its own symbolism - a defiance of convention, an escape from conflicted domestic life, and a sense of independence), while her mother raises her independently as social influences pull her marriage apart. In all honesty, the plot is rather predictable, a somewhat conventional adolescent-rebel-against-the-system narrative, but it is ably adapted to a new environment that hasn't been touched upon before. Decent performances, and a depiction of a Middle Eastern suburb that doesn't often get depicted without craters and bullets. (3.5/5) See more Georgan G 03/09/2021 Watching women in a different culture deal with their issues feels so intimate. See more Read all reviews
Wadjda

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Movie Info

Synopsis A rebellious Saudi girl (Waad Mohammed) enters a Koran recitation competition at her school and hopes to win enough money to buy her own bicycle.
Director
Haifaa Al-Mansour
Producer
Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul, Amr Alkahtani
Screenwriter
Haifaa Al-Mansour
Distributor
Sony Pictures Classics
Production Co
Razor Film Produktion GmbH
Rating
PG (Smoking|Brief Mild Language|Thematic Elements)
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Arabic
Release Date (Theaters)
Sep 13, 2013, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Feb 11, 2014
Box Office (Gross USA)
$1.4M
Runtime
1h 38m
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