Dur­ing the scenes in which Paikea shares Koro’s bicy­cle, she often holds on to his whale tooth neck­lace (Fig­ures 2 and 4). This ges­ture express­es her affin­i­ty as much as it fore­shad­ows their prox­im­i­ty in lin­eage. Although the grand­fa­ther refus­es to teach the girl tra­di­tion­al skills, such as how to use a taia­ha in Māori mar­tial art, his lega­cy as leader seems to trans­fer to his grand­daugh­ter via the whale tooth, at least metaphor­i­cal­ly. When Paikea’s vis­it­ing father invites her to join him abroad, Paikea delays the depar­ture by request­ing an extra round on Koro’s bicy­cle. This scene marks the last time Koro grants her the priv­i­lege of shar­ing his bicy­cle. When Pai, find­ing her bond with the whales dur­ing the air­port ride, decides not to leave with her father after all, Koro no longer picks her up from school. A bicy­cle next appears in the film when Paikea rides on her own. Behind Koro’s back, she has pur­sued her phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion, which shows when she pass­es the school bus by her­self, ped­alling at record speed (Fig­ure 6). It also shows when she dives for the whale tooth neck­lace Koro threw into the sea dur­ing a final test for the boys, among whom he hopes to find the next leader. Pai recov­ers this neck­lace in Koro’s absence (Fig­ure 5). Her inde­pen­dence at rid­ing the bicy­cle fore­shad­ows her own final test, the rid­ing of a whale. While not a major change to Ihimaera’s sto­ry­line, the use of the bicy­cle sym­bol in the film grants Caro the nod to De Sica, as well as to Susan B. Antho­ny. While the impor­tance of the bicy­cle as sym­bol is implic­it in Whale Rid­er, the fol­low­ing sec­tion dis­cuss­es an exam­ple of a film in which the basic trans­porta­tion tool takes cen­tre stage.

Still the bicy­cle float­ed in place on the oth­er side of the fence, not mov­ing, not ris­ing or falling, just hov­er­ing. It seemed to be poised at the point where wood­en boards met sky, wait­ing, ready for a ride. 
For what felt like for­ev­er, Wad­j­da con­tin­ued to stare. With­out look­ing down, she dropped her arm and slid her black stone into her pock­et. And still her eyes fol­lowed the bicy­cle. It was like a vision, a dream. The most beau­ti­ful dream she’d ever had. (Al Man­sour 59-60)

Haifaa Al Mansour’s Wad­j­da pre­miered in 2012, a decade after Whale Rid­er, at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val. It revolves around the bicy­cle with which the pro­tag­o­nist Wad­j­da becomes obsessed ear­ly on in the sto­ry. Al Man­sour has revealed her indebt­ed­ness to De Sica (Gar­cia 37).³ Like Whale Rid­er, Wad­j­da has been attacked on the grounds of its inter­na­tion­al suc­cess. Although Al Man­sour did grow up in the cul­ture por­trayed in her film (unlike Caro), she col­lab­o­rat­ed with an inter­na­tion­al crew and worked in par­tic­u­lar with Ger­man pro­duc­ers (like Caro). Tariq Al Hay­dar claims that “the polit­i­cal state­ment the film makes is spe­cious” (Al Hay­dar). His polemic con­demns the fact that Wadjda’s bicy­cle has the nation­al colour of the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia. In a Cineaste inter­view, Al Man­sour explains the spe­cif­ic role green plays in her coun­try by stat­ing that for Saud­is, “heav­en is green, not blue” (Gar­cia). Yet, oth­er col­ors play impor­tant roles through­out the movie, such as those of dif­fer­ent local foot­ball clubs. Wad­j­da uses string in those col­ors to pro­duce bracelets to sell in her attempt to raise mon­ey for the bicy­cle pur­chase. In the same Cineaste inter­view Maria Gar­cia dis­cuss­es blue nail pol­ish as a sym­bol of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. The same applies to Wadjda’s pur­ple shoelace, with pur­ple, at the lat­est since Alice Walker’s The Col­or Pur­ple, often seen in asso­ci­a­tion with women’s rights move­ments. The socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in De Sica’s post-World-War-II Ital­ian film stand in stark con­trast with those in Al Mansour’s con­tem­po­rary Sau­di Ara­bia. Although Wadjda’s fam­i­ly is not wealthy, they suf­fer nei­ther from unem­ploy­ment nor pover­ty. In this con­text, Caro’s Whangara par­al­lels De Sica’s Rome, though the for­mer is a very small com­mu­ni­ty com­pared to the lat­ter large city. Like Rome, Riyadh is a large city, but most of Al Mansour’s film takes place in Wadjda’s imme­di­ate neigh­bour­hood, which com­pares well in size with the small com­mu­ni­ty in Caro’s film. Both films do, how­ev­er, have much to do with parental affini­ties and youth­ful deci­sions, which pro­vides the main con­nec­tion to Bicy­cle Thieves.

Where­as the sym­bol­ic mean­ing of the bicy­cle Koro shares with Paikea is implic­it in Whale Rid­er, Wadjda’s desire to own one spe­cif­ic bicy­cle accounts for most of the plot devel­op­ment in Al Mansour’s film. Roy Armes’s dis­cus­sion of Wad­j­da has the char­ac­ter of a post scrip­tum at the end of New Voic­es in Arab Cin­e­ma (2015), but he does not fail to empha­size the “mag­i­cal sight” (Armes 303) that insti­gates Wadjda’s obses­sion when she first encoun­ters this bicy­cle. As it is trans­port­ed on top of a car, it seems to be fly­ing along the wall that con­ceals the mov­ing vehi­cle (Fig­ure 7). Wadjda’s imme­di­ate chase estab­lish­es the encounter as love at first sight (Fig­ure 8). She fol­lows the car all the way to the small shop (Fig­ure 9) whose ven­dor gives in to her beg­ging to hold on to this bicy­cle until she saves enough mon­ey to buy it (Fig­ure 10). This scene intro­duces the one spe­cial, inci­den­tal­ly green, bicy­cle whose pos­ses­sion Wad­j­da pur­sues with the same deter­mi­na­tion that guides Paikea’s strug­gle to assert her­self against her grand­fa­ther. The ini­tial wish to own a bicy­cle, how­ev­er, orig­i­nates in Wadjda’s friend­ship with her neigh­bour Abdul­lah (Fig­ures 11 and 12).

After a pre-cred­its pro­logue inside her school estab­lish­es that Wad­j­da stands out among her peers, two sub­se­quent scenes intro­duce her home and the con­flict she faces there between her par­ents. In the first scene, she helps her moth­er to get ready for work and defends her against the dri­ver, who com­plains about the reg­u­lar delay. As Wad­j­da leaves the house to walk to school in the sec­ond scene, her father arrives wear­ing a car mechan­ic out­fit. There are no fur­ther details about the father’s occu­pa­tion through­out the film, as he is not present very often. The home, how­ev­er, sug­gests that both par­ents have mod­est incomes. Hap­py to see her father, Wad­j­da indi­cates that he had not vis­it­ed their house for an entire week. Lat­er, view­ers find out that Wadjda’s father is look­ing for a sec­ond wife, since her moth­er can no longer bear chil­dren. As she parts with her father, Wad­j­da encoun­ters her friend Abdul­lah, who rides his bike to school with a group of oth­er boys. Abdullah’s teas­ing results in Wadjda’s idea that she should chal­lenge him in a race, and this idea prompts her desire to pos­sess a bicycle.

Wadjda’s bicy­cle fix­a­tion meets hos­til­i­ty from two adult women, her moth­er and her school prin­ci­pal. Although Abdul­lah at first also observes that girls don’t ride bicy­cles, he then lends Wad­j­da his own bicy­cle to prac­tice on the roof of her build­ing (Fig­ure 11). See­ing how her skills improve and that she grows fond of the activ­i­ty, he gives her a hel­met (Fig­ure 12). This thought­ful gift implies the boy’s belief in a future for his friend’s ambi­tion. It also asserts the tra­di­tion­al role of the male as pro­tec­tor, since Abdul­lah him­self rides with­out hel­met. When Wad­j­da, in the end, wins the Quran recita­tion com­pe­ti­tion, but los­es the mon­ey meant to buy her the desired bicy­cle, Abdul­lah offers to let her have his instead. Wad­j­da rejects the offer, say­ing that they both need bicy­cles for the pro­ject­ed race. This idea returns to this article’s intro­duc­to­ry ref­er­ence to Godard, with­out the com­pet­i­tive angle. Godard uses the metaphor of two sep­a­rate bicy­cles to empha­sise the nature of his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Anne-Marie Miéville, insin­u­at­ing that they work togeth­er inde­pen­dent­ly. Wad­j­da wants her own bicy­cle to par­tic­i­pate in an activ­i­ty with her friend that also grants each their inde­pen­dence. Until the end of the film, Abdul­lah and, in a way, the ven­dor, are the only char­ac­ters sup­port­ive of Wadjda’s plan.

Ms. Hes­sa, the rigid and poten­tial­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal school prin­ci­pal, favours Wad­j­da upon her progress with com­pe­ti­tion prepa­ra­tions. She with­holds, how­ev­er, the prize mon­ey once Wad­j­da explains her antic­i­pat­ed use for it. “Bikes are not for girls,” Ms. Hes­sa echoes the mother’s judg­ment. Wad­j­da brings up her plan to buy a bicy­cle sev­er­al times with her moth­er, main­ly as she helps her in the kitchen. Once, dur­ing prepa­ra­tions for the Morn­ing Prayer, the moth­er refers to a ruse women encoun­tered in Europe and North Amer­i­ca dur­ing the time Susan B. Antho­ny made the dec­la­ra­tion quot­ed in the open­ing sen­tence of the present study. This ruse pre­dict­ed a bicycle’s threat to women’s repro­duc­tive organs (Withers/Shea 43).

Once the father fol­lows through with his plan to mar­ry a sec­ond wife, Wadjda’s moth­er changes her mind and uses the mon­ey intend­ed for a fan­cy dress to woo her hus­band on Wadjda’s dream. The clos­ing scene shows Wadjda’s race with Abdul­lah. The final shot, as Ciecko sug­gests, shows “the girl look­ing out toward an off-screen hori­zon, sug­gest­ing poten­tial open­ness” (Ciecko 241; Fig­ure 13). An extreme long shot lead­ing up to this future out­look empha­sizes the dis­tance Wad­j­da is able to achieve because of the new­ly gained mobil­i­ty (Fig­ure 14). The open­ness of this scene con­trasts with women’s con­fine­ment in their pri­vate spheres, for exam­ple inside the home or the school. Wadjda’s moth­er refus­es to work, like her friend, at a near­by hos­pi­tal because the job would place her in what she con­sid­ers an off-lim­it pub­lic sphere. The school prin­ci­pal asks her stu­dents to move indoors when they are in dan­ger to be seen by work­ers on a neigh­bour­ing roof. Al Man­sour her­self had to work from with­in a van dur­ing the film­ing on loca­tion (Ciecko 240). The on-loca­tion set­tings, along with non-pro­fes­sion­al leads, under­line both films’ debt to Bicy­cle Thieves.

On-loca­tion film­ing depends on film­ing per­mits in the Gulf coun­tries. It thus stip­u­lates an accep­tance of giv­en pro­duc­tion codes. The deci­sion to film on loca­tion, then, empha­sizes Al Mansour’s aim to touch view­ers “on a very basic lev­el” (Gar­cia). The film nev­er pre­tend­ed to func­tion as “rev­o­lu­tion­ary art,” which Al Hay­dar mis­tak­en­ly pre­sup­pos­es. Stud­ied care­ful­ly, how­ev­er, Wad­j­da does, as Dale Hud­son and Patri­cia Zim­mer­mann put it, “nego­ti­ate the com­plex­i­ties of indi­rect dis­sent” (Hudson/Zimmermann 157). It also con­tributes to the slow­ly grow­ing cat­e­go­ry of acces­si­ble movies made by women. In “The Con­fi­dence Game,” Ruby Rich writes that “the mys­te­ri­ous absence of women in the direc­to­r­i­al ranks con­tin­ues to this day” (Rich 160). Direc­tors such as Caro and Al Man­sour may inspire more women film­mak­ers to change this sit­u­a­tion, much like their pro­tag­o­nists assert their posi­tions in the respec­tive films.

Das Leben ist wie ein Fahrrad. Man muss sich vor­wärts bewe­gen, um das Gle­ichgewicht nicht zu ver­lieren. (Ein­stein)⁴

De Sica’s main char­ac­ter in Bicy­cle Thieves depends on a bicy­cle to main­tain his job. His wife makes an enor­mous sac­ri­fice that allows him to pur­chase the essen­tial tool of trans­porta­tion in the post-World-War-II Ital­ian reces­sion. Her sac­ri­fice dur­ing the pre­vail­ing and dire eco­nom­ic con­di­tions of the moment redou­bles the pain of the trag­ic theft of the bicy­cle dur­ing his first day on the job. Bicy­cle Thieves thus presents an extreme exam­ple of an on-screen bicy­cle whose pos­ses­sion lit­er­al­ly lib­er­ates a fam­i­ly from their pover­ty, even if that lib­er­a­tion lasts for less than a day. In con­trast, Caro’s Whale Rid­er pays no atten­tion to the pos­ses­sion of a bicy­cle. Grand­fa­ther Koro’s bicy­cle is not even a cen­tral prop, yet its use makes a cru­cial state­ment about Paikea’s accep­tance of her own poten­tial. While the shared bicy­cle rides sig­nal the bond between Koro and his grand­daugh­ter (Fig­ure 1) and draw the viewer’s atten­tion to the land­scape the pair tra­vers­es, Paikea’s inde­pen­dent ride final­ly reveals her ambi­tion. Not only does she ride on her own the last time the bicy­cle appears in Whale Rid­er, Paikea ped­dles fast enough in this scene to pass the school bus (Fig­ure 6).

Unlike Whale Rid­er, Al Mansour’s Wad­j­da hear­kens back at the ques­tion of pos­ses­sion pur­sued in Bicy­cle Thieves, but instead of the pat­tern of gain and loss cre­at­ed by De Sica, Wad­j­da builds up to the long-desired pur­chase that seals the semi-hap­py end of the sto­ry. While the bicy­cle pro­vokes the son to wit­ness the father’s humil­i­a­tion in Bicy­cle Thieves, it strength­ens the ties between daugh­ter and moth­er in Wad­j­da. Both Whale Rid­er and Wad­j­da share the neo­re­al­ist char­ac­ter­is­tics of on-loca­tion film­ing and reliance on non­pro­fes­sion­al actors. Addi­tion­al­ly, Whale Rid­er includes ele­ments of mag­ic real­ism as a result of its source in Ihimaera’s nov­el. Both Caro and Al Man­sour employ the bicy­cle as a sym­bol for lib­er­a­tion. It sym­bol­izes Paikea’s as well as Wadjda’s strug­gle to assert them­selves in their trib­al com­mu­ni­ties, Māori and Sau­di respec­tive­ly. It may fur­ther sym­bol­ize the asser­tion of two women film­mak­ers in a glob­al indus­try. The two films dis­cussed here mark begin­nings of Caro’s as well as Al Mansour’s careers. Both films are, to use Ciecko’s words, “cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic and glob­al­ly appeal­ing” (Ciecko 241) cin­e­mat­ic arte­facts. They intro­duced their direc­tors into a canon of world cin­e­ma, even if sub­se­quent films did not con­sis­tent­ly mea­sure up to this ear­ly achievement.

The work of both Caro and Al Man­sour could pro­vide mate­r­i­al for future books such as White’s Women’s Cin­e­ma, World Cin­e­ma. White under­lines the impor­tance of a glob­al net­work for women film­mak­ers (White 4). Exam­in­ing Kathryn Bigelow’s suc­cess along­side direc­to­r­i­al work by women in inde­pen­dent indus­tries across the globe, White out­lines a hope­ful devel­op­ment dur­ing the cur­rent cen­tu­ry. “Women film­mak­ers from all over,” she states, “are nav­i­gat­ing insti­tu­tion­al pol­i­tics and mak­ing films that have a chance to trav­el and be seen” (4-5). Such expo­sure is cru­cial for films such as Whale Rid­er and Wad­j­da to par­tic­i­pate in the tran­scul­tur­al sup­port net­work in ques­tion. Pos­i­tive role mod­els may help emerg­ing women film­mak­ers out of the “con­fi­dence game” trap referred to by Rich. Much like the mother’s move to sol­i­dar­i­ty in the clo­sure of Wad­j­da allows for her daughter’s suc­cess, a large num­ber of female pre­de­ces­sors have con­tributed to con­di­tions that are more favourable for younger women film­mak­ers today. White lists impor­tant exam­ples, such as Tunisian Moufi­da Tlatli and Alger­ian Yam­i­na Ben­guigui, who took on roles in pub­lic pol­i­tics in addi­tion to their cre­ative endeav­ours (5).

Al Man­sour, like­wise, joined Sau­di Arabia’s new board of the Gen­er­al Author­i­ty for Cul­ture, and she returned to a Sau­di set­ting in her new film The Per­fect Can­di­date. Since Wad­j­da, Al Man­sour direct­ed the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion film Mary Shel­ley, “with con­fi­dence if lit­tle rec­og­niz­able pres­ence” (White, “Gen­der Mat­ters”), and the Net­flix adap­ta­tion of Trisha R. Thomas’ Nap­pi­ly Ever After (2018). With her pre­miere of The Per­fect Can­di­date, the sto­ry of a young female Sau­di physi­cian, she was one of only two com­pet­ing women film­mak­ers in the 2019 Venice Fes­ti­val, a sign that the so-called cel­lu­loid ceil­ing is still a seri­ous obsta­cle, and that the 50:50 by 2020 fes­ti­val pledge is not equal­ly suc­cess­ful every­where. This pledge is not lim­it­ed to the posi­tion of film direc­tor, but con­cerns many oth­er activ­i­ties per­tain­ing to the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of movies.

The absence of female direc­tors in the Venice com­pe­ti­tion does not relate to a lack of pro­duc­tion, as Kate Erb­land empha­sizes in “Venice Film Festival’s Women Direc­tor Prob­lem: Gen­der Par­i­ty Shouldn’t Be That Hard.” The Toron­to Fes­ti­val, which takes place short­ly after the event in Venice, pro­vides the strongest con­trast. A few years ago, White already com­mend­ed the Cana­di­an plat­form (“Gen­der Mat­ters”). Dur­ing the year White pub­lished the respec­tive essay, Al Man­sour par­tic­i­pat­ed at TIFF with Mary Shel­ley. Ear­li­er that year, Caro’s adap­ta­tion of Diane Ackerman’s Zookeeper’s Wife won a Heart­land film award. For both Caro and Al Man­sour, the projects fol­low­ing the two films stud­ied here nev­er achieved a com­pa­ra­ble suc­cess. They have, nev­er­the­less, pro­vid­ed each of the two women film­mak­ers with unique oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­cov­er mate­r­i­al, exper­i­ment with diverse film­ing con­di­tions, explore new col­lab­o­ra­tions, and con­tin­ue to be part of what has come to be called a “cine­fem­i­nist” movement.

The release of Whale Rid­er and Wad­j­da occurred in two very dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts, Māori and Sau­di respec­tive­ly. The present com­par­a­tive study has shown that view­ing the two films along­side each oth­er makes clear the sym­bol­ic use of bicy­cles as vehi­cles for lib­er­a­tion. The aim here has been to con­tribute to the kind of tran­scul­tur­al net­work that Patri­cia White iden­ti­fies as vital to the improve­ment of con­di­tions for women film­mak­ers world­wide. Jere­my With­ers and Daniel P. Shea point out that a bicycle’s “asso­ci­a­tion with free­dom, mobil­i­ty, and the lib­er­at­ing promise of moder­ni­ty was secured dur­ing its rise to mass pop­u­lar­i­ty fol­low­ing the appear­ance of the safe­ty bicy­cle” (Withers/Shea 2). This basic tool of trans­porta­tion is, how­ev­er, not equal­ly acces­si­ble to every­one across the globe, as cycling women, for exam­ple in Pak­istan (Imti­az), tes­ti­fy. A com­par­a­tive study of the two 21^st-cen­tu­ry fea­tures by women film­mak­ers gives Whale Rid­er and Wad­j­da a fem­i­nist per­spec­tive on the neo­re­al­ist tra­di­tion estab­lished by De Sica’s Bicy­cle Thieves, even if the socio-eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances in the spe­cif­ic set­tings are very different.

Moth­er and daugh­ter are close yet divid­ed over indi­vid­ual goals in Haifaa Al Mansour’s film. In the end, the moth­er gives Wad­j­da the desired bicy­cle despite her ini­tial oppo­si­tion to the plan. Niki Caro’s por­trait of the con­flict between grand­fa­ther and grand­daugh­ter adds a gen­er­a­tion lay­er to the theme of parental choic­es. Both movies mas­ter on-loca­tion film­ing, Caro’s in Whangara, Al Mansour’s in Riyadh, though the latter’s focus on a sub­ur­ban neigh­bour­hood resem­bles the former’s spa­tial con­fine­ment. Both films work with non-pro­fes­sion­als to tell sto­ries of strong girl char­ac­ters who assert them­selves in their respec­tive trib­al com­mu­ni­ties, the pres­sures of which are more pro­nounced in the Māori set­ting. The fact that bicy­cles sym­bol­ize this process of a girl’s com­ing of age in each of the two films leads to a read­ing of this lib­er­at­ing sym­bol on a meta-lev­el in a glob­al film­mak­ing com­mu­ni­ty. The more and the more diverse role mod­els there are in var­i­ous indus­tries across the world, the eas­i­er it will become for women to opt for a career as filmmaker.