Synopsis
Wadjda is a 10-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. 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.

Program Note
To her headmistress, Wadjda poses a real headache. She wears her hijab carelessly, and walks around like a tomboy in ankle high
 Converse sneakers that actually look great on her. Recently, she is caught up with the idea of having a bicycle race with her friend
 Abdullah, a boy from the neighborhood, but she does not own a bicycle. When she discovers that a brand new bicycle is on sale
 for SR800 at the local toy store, she pesters her mother to buy it for her. All her efforts are in vain however, since girls riding bikes
 are frowned upon in Saudi Arabia. Unable to give up on her dream, Wadjda decides to raise the money herself. Just as she is losing
 hope of raising enough money, she hears of the SR 1,000 cash prize for a Qur’an recitation competition at her school. It is often
 said that the Arabic language is a language of poetry and the Qur’an shows its linguistic culmination. Following what she regards
 as a divine message, Wadjda, determined to get hold of the new bicycle, devotes herself to memorizing beautiful verses. On the day
 her father welcomes his second wife home, Wadjda and her mother become united again over a new bicycle. Thanks to Wadjda,
 the first feature film from Saudi Arabia, women are now allowed to ride bicycles in Saudi Arabia. The film’s brilliant structure is
 particularly impressive and the audiences would be delighted in the rare opportunity to hear a woman’s story in Saudi Arabia
 through the voice of a Saudi Arabian woman. [KIM Eun-hee]