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| Wadjda illustrates how Arab cinema is just beginning to come of age | Wadjda illustrates how Arab cinema is just beginning to come of age |
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| Wadjda – one of 2013's best films so far – deserves its success. To get the formalities out of the way, the first feature entirely shot on Saudi Arabian soil and the first by a Saudi female director has struck blows both for the kingdom's film-makers and its women, thanks to Haifaa al-Mansour's massively endearing tale of a 10-year-old girl prepared to do anything for a bicycle of her own. | Wadjda – one of 2013's best films so far – deserves its success. To get the formalities out of the way, the first feature entirely shot on Saudi Arabian soil and the first by a Saudi female director has struck blows both for the kingdom's film-makers and its women, thanks to Haifaa al-Mansour's massively endearing tale of a 10-year-old girl prepared to do anything for a bicycle of her own. |
| We should be careful, though, of praising Wadjda just because of its clutch of firsts. Groundbreaking is a showy word; Al-Mansour photographed in her lime-green jeans and Adidas is an exciting notion of future Saudi womanhood. But it's as much about marketing, about feeding western expectations of progress needed to sell the film, as it is about the rights of Saudi women. Rarely mentioned are the other two full-length Saudi features from the last decade – 2006's Keif al-Hal? and 2009's Menahi – neither of which had al-Mansour's film's killer hook: a feminist story filmed in the heart of one of the world's most repressive nations. | We should be careful, though, of praising Wadjda just because of its clutch of firsts. Groundbreaking is a showy word; Al-Mansour photographed in her lime-green jeans and Adidas is an exciting notion of future Saudi womanhood. But it's as much about marketing, about feeding western expectations of progress needed to sell the film, as it is about the rights of Saudi women. Rarely mentioned are the other two full-length Saudi features from the last decade – 2006's Keif al-Hal? and 2009's Menahi – neither of which had al-Mansour's film's killer hook: a feminist story filmed in the heart of one of the world's most repressive nations. |
| Wadjda's marketability blinds us to the fact it's part of a bigger story that receives little sustained attention: the difficulties faced by Arab film-makers, men and women, across the region. In the Gulf especially, authorities rarely understand cinema that is only just beginning to shift in less conservative regimes, like Qatar and the UAE, let alone in Saudi Arabia. That means a poor skills base from which directors such as al-Mansour – who is lucky enough to be foreign-educated and supported by a progressive figure like Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal – can draw. Paradoxically, the high expectations towards this most high-profile of cultural activities can lead to disasters like Jean-Jacques Annaud's Black Gold, along with invariable interference from censorship boards. | Wadjda's marketability blinds us to the fact it's part of a bigger story that receives little sustained attention: the difficulties faced by Arab film-makers, men and women, across the region. In the Gulf especially, authorities rarely understand cinema that is only just beginning to shift in less conservative regimes, like Qatar and the UAE, let alone in Saudi Arabia. That means a poor skills base from which directors such as al-Mansour – who is lucky enough to be foreign-educated and supported by a progressive figure like Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal – can draw. Paradoxically, the high expectations towards this most high-profile of cultural activities can lead to disasters like Jean-Jacques Annaud's Black Gold, along with invariable interference from censorship boards. |
| All of this is rooted in deeper struggles about the pace of modernisation, and how these societies are learning to present and ultimately think about themselves. Because of Saudi Arabia's secretive nature, any film from the country is groundbreaking in this respect, as BBC Arabic producer Mona Deeley recently noted about Wadjda on an Australian website: "Saudi Arabia is a society covered in other people's projections of it because it never represents itself. The film gives an insight into things we never see, from streets to schools to life behind closed doors." | All of this is rooted in deeper struggles about the pace of modernisation, and how these societies are learning to present and ultimately think about themselves. Because of Saudi Arabia's secretive nature, any film from the country is groundbreaking in this respect, as BBC Arabic producer Mona Deeley recently noted about Wadjda on an Australian website: "Saudi Arabia is a society covered in other people's projections of it because it never represents itself. The film gives an insight into things we never see, from streets to schools to life behind closed doors." |
| Ultimately, every Arab film-maker has to negotiate this minefield, and choose how adventurously to push the limits of representation. Wadjda makes a catchy girl-power headline, but it's interesting that al-Mansour has been more circumspect about its purpose in interviews, stressing that her earlier version of the script attacked Saudi life more directly. But the finished film plays a cleverer game, and even pays tribute to tradition to some extent: Wadjda tries to earn the money to pay for her bike by entering a Qur'an-reciting competition. | Ultimately, every Arab film-maker has to negotiate this minefield, and choose how adventurously to push the limits of representation. Wadjda makes a catchy girl-power headline, but it's interesting that al-Mansour has been more circumspect about its purpose in interviews, stressing that her earlier version of the script attacked Saudi life more directly. But the finished film plays a cleverer game, and even pays tribute to tradition to some extent: Wadjda tries to earn the money to pay for her bike by entering a Qur'an-reciting competition. |
| Al-Mansour doesn't mock or criticise this. Her choice of passage for her protagonist, from sura two, is striking: "Allah hath set a seal on their hearts." In its initial context, this refers to non-believers, but the chosen extract directs it towards "the people … who say, 'We believe in Allah and the Last Day,' but they are not believers. They [think to] deceive Allah and those who believe, but they deceive not except themselves and perceive [it] not." It seems to be hypocrisy that offends al-Mansour – perhaps fuelled by a devout society that permits great inequality, where rich Saudis indulge in the vices Wahhabi Islam demonises. One that produces characters like the moralising teacher, who is rumoured to be having an affair herself. | Al-Mansour doesn't mock or criticise this. Her choice of passage for her protagonist, from sura two, is striking: "Allah hath set a seal on their hearts." In its initial context, this refers to non-believers, but the chosen extract directs it towards "the people … who say, 'We believe in Allah and the Last Day,' but they are not believers. They [think to] deceive Allah and those who believe, but they deceive not except themselves and perceive [it] not." It seems to be hypocrisy that offends al-Mansour – perhaps fuelled by a devout society that permits great inequality, where rich Saudis indulge in the vices Wahhabi Islam demonises. One that produces characters like the moralising teacher, who is rumoured to be having an affair herself. |
| Significantly, al-Mansour doesn't reject Islam, but simply requests that women have access to its core values: tolerance and human dignity. I have the feeling she knows that any change will, and perhaps should, be hard-negotiated – and a Marie Claire puff piece is only the tiniest part of that. The western lionising of Wadjda could even be counterproductive, comfortably setting up al-Mansour as the property of the lucrative globalised film festival circuit while her debut has yet to secure a release in a single Muslim country. | Significantly, al-Mansour doesn't reject Islam, but simply requests that women have access to its core values: tolerance and human dignity. I have the feeling she knows that any change will, and perhaps should, be hard-negotiated – and a Marie Claire puff piece is only the tiniest part of that. The western lionising of Wadjda could even be counterproductive, comfortably setting up al-Mansour as the property of the lucrative globalised film festival circuit while her debut has yet to secure a release in a single Muslim country. |
| I wonder if that was the case with Samira Makhmalbaf, whose excellent 2003 film At Five in the Afternoon also made a powerful case for women's education. It was trumpeted in the west as the first post-Taliban feature from Afghanistan – but media exposure didn't translate into a long-term future for an Afghan industry. | I wonder if that was the case with Samira Makhmalbaf, whose excellent 2003 film At Five in the Afternoon also made a powerful case for women's education. It was trumpeted in the west as the first post-Taliban feature from Afghanistan – but media exposure didn't translate into a long-term future for an Afghan industry. |
| Ultimately, it's up to Arabs – including their film-makers – to define their own future on their own terms. Like Wadjda's heroine, they should be wary of dubious offers of stabilisers (as if the Middle East hasn't had enough of those from outsiders recently). Al-Mansour's film, as Xan Brooks noted in his review last week, "stands on its own merits", separate from western accolades, and makes its own case for how life could be. The Arabic version of the sexual revolution, when it comes, could look different from ours (which, judging by the current agonising over porn, is still a work-in-progress anyway). As for us, we can help most by watching Wadjda, then the next film, and listening clearly to what the Arab world has to say. | Ultimately, it's up to Arabs – including their film-makers – to define their own future on their own terms. Like Wadjda's heroine, they should be wary of dubious offers of stabilisers (as if the Middle East hasn't had enough of those from outsiders recently). Al-Mansour's film, as Xan Brooks noted in his review last week, "stands on its own merits", separate from western accolades, and makes its own case for how life could be. The Arabic version of the sexual revolution, when it comes, could look different from ours (which, judging by the current agonising over porn, is still a work-in-progress anyway). As for us, we can help most by watching Wadjda, then the next film, and listening clearly to what the Arab world has to say. |
| Wadjda is out now. | Wadjda is out now. |
| Next week's After Hollywood will look at gay Nollywood. Which global cinematic stories would you like to see covered in the column? Let us know in the comments below. | Next week's After Hollywood will look at gay Nollywood. Which global cinematic stories would you like to see covered in the column? Let us know in the comments below. |
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