80
This resonant film, detailing struggles in a far-flung place, represents world cinema in the classic sense.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
90
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
A simple, solid, deeply affecting film.
90
Wadjda is an object of stark beauty, an oasis of free-spirited cinema emerging from the desert.
80
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.
80
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.
100
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
One of the best films of the year.
50
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.
80
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.
80
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.