A beautiful eye opening look into a life and culture that is not our own. The story of Wadja was a sad but triumphant one.
The dynamic between Wadjda and her mother morphs into an amazing bond. This aspect of the movie moved me to tears. It shows a that the bond between a mother and her child is a powerful one, no matter what stands in the way. Wadjda and her mother both grown in this story as they take on challenges with deep core values. Wadjda with her religion club and her mother with her husband taking a second wife. Something we as Americans don’t understand or even know much about. Seeing it through her eyes makes your heart break with her.
Wadjda playing in select theaters around the country. Find it in your area.
WADJDA is a 10-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Although she lives in a conservative world, Wadjda is fun loving, entrepreneurial and always pushing the boundaries of what she can get away with. After a fight with her friend Abdullah, a neighborhood boy she shouldn’t be playing with, Wadjda sees a beautiful green bicycle for sale. She wants the bicycle desperately so that she can beat Abdullah in a race. But Wadjda’s mother won’t allow it, fearing repercussions from a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl’s virtue. So Wadjda decides to try and raise the money herself.
At first, Wadjda’s mother is too preoccupied with convincing her husband not to take a second wife to realize what’s going on. And soon enough Wadjda’s plans are thwarted when she is caught running various schemes at school. Just as she is losing hope of raising enough money, she hears of a cash prize for a Koran recitation competition at her school. She devotes herself to the memorization and recitation of Koranic verses, and her teachers begin to see Wadjda as a model pious girl. The competition isn‘t going to be easy, especially for a troublemaker like Wadjda, but she refuses to give in. She is determined to continue fighting for her dreams…
