Shadows Contactless: Friday September 4 9pm SBS on Demand and Facebook Messenger: WADJDA

Wadjda is a schoolgirl. She wants her own bike. To do this she enters a competition that could get her there. She has to be careful about this. Her mother isn't keen for her to go riding a bike around town as one wrong prang might break the girl's hymen. Wadjda is ten years old and lives in Saudi Arabia.

You might get a couple of impressions from that description that you are in for either a grim tale of oppression or a knockabout comedy of innuendo but this is neither of those things. There is a lot to be said for the position of women in this particular society and expectations of them and Wadjda's growing awareness of the kind of hurdles she will be facing in the not too distant future. But this film does something that many of its kind don't do, it remembers she's a kid and how kids pursue their things of great import. This prevents the film from preaching or being too sentimental and I can safely promise that you will be neither bored nor lectured and right up to the final gesture before the end credits you might well be charmed.

See you on the couch.