10-year-old Wadjda, played by Waad Mohammed lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with her mother, Reem Abdullah; her father, who doesn’t live with them, visits occasionally but it seems likely he’ll take a second wife because he’s under pressure to have a son. Wadjda is a tomboy and a rebel; more than anything else she wants a bicycle so that she can race – and beat – her friend, Abdullah. But, in a society where women aren’t allowed to drive cars, girls riding bikes is also frowned upon.



This gem of a film is remarkable on many counts. It’s the first feature film made in Saudi Arabia, a country where, apparently, there are no cinemas; and what’s more, in this patriarchal society, the director is a woman, Haifaa Al Mansour, who incidentally studied in Australia. A film produced under the most difficult conditions, WADJDA is a simple yet telling story of the pressures on women and girls in this country. 

Made with the help of German finance, and with a largely European crew, the film is an insight into a little-seen world and compares favourably with films made by women directors in Iran. Tender, humorous and a little bit sad, the film doesn’t push its points too far, but its message is clear for all to see – and the performances, especially that of young Waad Mohammed, are simply wonderful

It’s the mark of a good film, when it’s so simple you can sum it up in a sentence, and so deep you’re still digging into it hours, even days after the credits roll. That’s Frances Ha.
Frances , played by Greta Gerwig, is a 27-year-old New Yorker trying to figure out her place in the world.: She has a roommate, Sophie (played by Sting’s daughter Mickey Sumner), with whom she lives “like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex.” She breaks up with her boyfriend (Michael Esper) because she doesn’t want to break her apartment lease with Sophie.
Sophie then decides to get a new roommate herself, leaving Frances to flail about for a place to crash, even as her job – as a backup dancer in a struggling troupe – threatens to similarly unravel. France’s problems are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty minor. Her new roommates, who seem effortlessly poised several rungs above her on the economic ladder, point out that she’s not truly poor. “You’d feel poor if you had as little money as I do,” she replies.
Frances is a fantastically complicated creation. Nerdy, needy and eager to please, she speaks elliptically (and not always truthfully), combining iterations of what she wants and what she thinks others want to hear. When she books an ill-advised weekend trip to Paris, she spends half her time in the City of Light sleeping off the jet lag, and the rest trying to set up dinner with a friend, and trying not to sound too frantic about it..