Humanist movie, Muslim characters...
TRIGGER WARNING, PLUCKY KIDS - I normally HATE Plucky Kids in movies. Whenever a movie critic describes a child actor as "irrepressible," I'm generally in favor of repressing the brat immediately. By any means necessary - anything from a ball-gag to extreme rendition by a SEAL team.
Happily, that doesn't apply here.
Movie: Wadjda (2012)
Director: Haifaa Al-Mansour - a Saudi woman who managed to shoot this movie in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. How TF did she DO that? Given the rigid Saudi laws against men and women working together, and women generally doing anything. One reviewer said Al-Mansour directed the movie "from the back of a van."
Storyline: Wadjda is a 10-year-old Saudi girl determined to buy herself a bicycle. And if you thought Cap'n Ahab was relentless going after that whale, wait'll you see this kid scheming to get that bike.
She persists, even though her mother warns: "If you ride a bike, you won't be able to have children!"
Wadjda finally comes up with a way to raise the money - by winning the Koranic recitation contest at school, even though she doesn't know much about the Koran.
She enlists in Koran class, where the teacher's first warning is: "If you've got your period you're not allowed to touch the Koran. Use a tissue."
Telling any more would get me into *SPOILER* territory and I don't want to do that.
As other people have noted, this is a very humanistic movie. Showing that all of us humans tend to have the same sort of wants and motivations, no matter where or under what ideology we happen to be raised in.
IMO, this is also a sneakily feminist movie. It reminds of Leila Ahmed's comments in her book Women and Gender In Islam - that in the Middle East, Western feminism will always be associated with Western imperialism. And whatever form feminism takes in Muslim countries, it will have to be forged by the women living there, not outsiders.
Also check out the first comment at IMdB - from a Saudi woman who saw this movie at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh. She couldn't see it in a Saudi movie theater because those don't exist - they are considered evil.
ImdB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258858/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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