The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton

One of the best films of the year.

Chicago Sun-Times by Bruce Ingram

Al-Mansour has managed to embue Wadjda with a hopeful spirit, partially because she takes time to show women finding ways to be themselves in private moments. And partially because she suggests with a few subtle touches that the situation might be slowly improving.

The Dissolve by Andrew Lapin

Wadjda is an object of stark beauty, an oasis of free-spirited cinema emerging from the desert.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

A simple, solid, deeply affecting film.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

With enormous sympathy for all, Al Mansour captures the isolation of Saudi women and their parallel lives of freedom at home and invisibility outside.

Arizona Republic by Randy Cordova

The movie’s best moments are the small ones.

Slate by Dana Stevens

It’s a stunningly assured debut, a slyly subversive delight, and one of my favorite movies of the year so far.

Boston Globe by Peter Keough

The world of cinema is richer for the voice of Al Mansour; she speaks for the women of her country, and for people everywhere.

New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme

What makes the movie so delightful is that Wadjda isn’t trying to make trouble; she’s just being herself. A shot of the system of wire hangers attached to her radio so she can pick up Western music stations sums up her can-do attitude.

USA Today by Claudia Puig

Not only is this a deftly crafted and superbly acted film, but Wadjda sheds a powerful light on what women face, starting in childhood, in an oppressive regime.

Total Film

Al-Mansour carefully dodges easy uplift, but her message of hope to future generations of Saudi women is clear.

New York Daily News

This resonant film, detailing struggles in a far-flung place, represents world cinema in the classic sense.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

An Arabic-German coproduction, it is a rare movie shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, which has no cinema industry to speak of, and the first feature by a female filmmaker from that country. Forbidden from mixing with the men in her crew, Al-Mansour often directed via walkie-talkie from the back of a van.

Empire by David Parkinson

As simple and charming as you could wish for, this is a genuinely pioneering debut from a female Saudi filmmaker and a striking piece of work by any standards.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Modest as it may look, this is boundary-pushing cinema in all the best ways, and what a thrill it is to hear those boundaries creak.

The Guardian by Xan Brooks

You'd need a heart of stone not to be won over by Wadjda, a rebel yell with a spoonful of sugar and a pungent sense of a Riyadh society split between the home, the madrasa and the shopping mall.

Slant Magazine by R. Kurt Osenlund

It doesn't play like reality, but like boilerplate filmic fantasy, and its novel setting and inception struggles seem positioned as a beard--or veil, if you will--to mask its mediocrity.