Wadjda is Saudi Arabia’s first feature-length film and is shot by a woman

Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director, and although 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 and, therefore, rather unlike The World’s End, which isn’t. It also has a few good jokes in it, which is rather unlike The World’s End, too. And it treats women as worth more than a quick shag in a toilet, which The World’s End doesn’t, just so you know.

The story is a seemingly simple one: Wadjda is a ten-year-old girl living in Riyadh whose ambition is to buy a bicycle so she can race her friend, a boy, Abdullah. It’s that simple, on the surface, but Haifaa Al-Mansour (the director, and also writer) gently plays with it so we understand a little of what it’s like to live as a woman in such an oppressive regime.