Wadjda the movie. Go and see it.

Are you fed up of viewing films where the action is set in plastic USA? I saw WADJDA a few days ago. It is the story of a Saudi Arabian girl who sets her mind on buying a bicycle and this in a country where women don't do that sort of thing. 


The film is funny, it is touching, it is tender and, thank goodness, it does not have a Hollywood ending where everything is sown up nicely. The snapshot of Saudi domestic life is fascinating. Is it realistic? I don't know, but the people look real. They are not talking mannequins. 

When I went to see it the screening was preceded by somebody promoting Fifty Years of Feminism but luckily the speaker was an academic and she used lecturespeak – an assembly of obscure but impressively sounding words glued together with 'aaah' and 'errrm' so as to render the meaning unintelligible to the audience but to make her appear learned. Then we watched the film. It is great. Go and see it and make up your own mind.