Ecologies of Constraint: Eco-Critical and Ecofeminist Readings of Gendered Mobility in Haifaa al-Mansour’s Saudi Film Wadjda

Abstract

 This article offers an ecocritical and ecofeminist reading of Haifaa al-Mansour’s Wadjda (2012), focing on the role of gendered mobility within the material and spatial organization of Riyadh. Existing studies of the film primarily investigate gender politics and female agency within Saudi society, focing on the bicycle as a symbol e of autonomy within the country’s patriarchal context. This article, however, foces on the film’s exploration of its urban environment, and its relationship to the lives and experiences of the female characters. Through the application of qualitative close reading of the film as a whole, and the foced analysis of sixteen sequences identified for their depiction of public movement, transport, built space, exposure, enclosure, and the recurring bicycle motif, this study demonstrates how the material and spatial organization of Riyadh makes mobility unevenly available to women and girls within the film. Ultimately, I argue that the built form of Riyadh and the regulation of gender relations become mutually legible, as reflected in the movement of women through the city’s vario locations. Furthermore, I argue that the bicycle plays an ecofeminist role in the film, not as evidence of environmental activism, but as a non-motorized mode of transport whose access is gendered. Finally, grounding the analysis in specific sequences timestamps within Wadjda , the study demonstrates how the film links gendered agency and urban mobility, without the need to interpret environmental or patriarchal constraints as mere metaphors. Furthermore, it extends the study of eco-film and ecofeminism to Saudi and Gulf cinema, while recognizing the potential limitations of interpreting ecological intention within the realist mise-en-scène of a film like Wadjda.