Saudi Arabia continues to be a hothouse of creative narratives about women who are striving to obtain basic personal freedoms. With Azza, German director Stephanie Brockhaus plunges into the courageous life of Azza Al Shareef, a divorced mother who makes her own way in a man’s world and survives by giving women driving lessons. It is an upbeat, hopeful film that is full of humor, tears and surprises, briskly paced and superbly shot: an engrossing, good-looking documentary that is making its MENA premiere in Cairo’s Horizons of Arab cinema section, after wending its way through European doc fests.
Brockhaus, whose credits include On the Other Side of Life, Some Things Are Hard to Talk About and The Poetess, never appears in the film as more than an offscreen voice, but her presence is strongly felt as the interlocutor listening to and sympathizing with Azza’s heartfelt introspection. Female empathy is a strong current running through the loosely woven scenes and the bond of friendship between director and subject encourages candor and trust.
Dressed in black, like the young woman riding beside her, Azza sits behind the wheel of her rugged SUV discussing how bad other drivers are. Men are especially arrogant when they see a woman is driving, and Azza wastes no time putting the driver of the car in front of her in his place. It’s a well-chosen intro to the protagonist’s world view and her utter refusal to be put down because of her gender, underlined by a few bars of humorous music.
The story of Azza’s marriage and divorce forms a large part of who she is, and as she meets various members of her family a painful drama of violence and betrayal comes out. She was 16 and deep into her studies when her father decided she had enough schooling and needed to get married. When she refused his choice of a husband, he drew a knife on her. She married the man for her family’s sake but it was a disaster. Many children and beatings later, Azza demanded a divorce and obtained it — after driving off with her husband’s car and threatening to demolish it if he didn’t give her the divorce. He gave it to her – but kept all the kids.
This back-and-forth saga of suffering and one-upmanship rings so true to life that Azza’s story never slips into the maudlin register of victimhood, though some of the mistreatment she describes brings tears to her eyes. Then she wipes them away and vows to overcome the bad cards she has been dealt. It anguishes her that, with all her skills, she can’t get a well-paying job, one that would permit her to live with her four original kids as well as the baby girl she had with her second spouse Maher — all because she doesn’t have a college degree. Then she promises fiercely, “I’ll have my own academy one day.”
It is a rather breath-taking portrait of modern-day Saudi Arabia, where the trad wife role, in one of its most oppressive incarnations, is in rapid evolution. Azza doesn’t neglect to mention the change in laws in 2017 which allowed women to rent apartments in their own name for the first time.
Perhaps even more amazing is the utter freedom Azza shows in nature, where she is most herself. Getting Maher’s reluctant permission to spend four days traveling around the desert with the film crew, Aza discovers a world of beauty she never knew existed. Behind the wheel of her four wheel drive SUV she cuts figures in the sand and fixes small emergencies, proud that she has done it herself without asking for help. At one point, she jumps out of the car into a sudden shower, soaking up the rain and exclaiming, “I’m happy!” These moments are accompanied by Amélie Legrand’s soft, joyful score that conveys her optimism.
In counterpoint to the light-hearted music is the swiftly unfolding action, edited by Ulrike Tortora as a kaleidoscope of images in motion – driving, riding horses, herding camels, extracting an ancient agate from a prehistoric rock. The high quality cinematography, credited to Anne Misselwitz and Brockhaus, is crisp and visceral, giving an epic sense to the endless stretches of highway cutting through sand dunes, and turning the deep blacks of the night into a warm envelope for women brave enough to sleep under the stars.
Director, screenplay: Stephanie Brockhaus
Cast: Azza Al Shareef
Producer: Hans Robert Eisenhauer
Cinematography: Anne Misselwitz, Stefanie Brockhaus
Editing: Ulrike Tortora
Music: Amélie Legrand
Sound: Michael Hinreiner, Kirsten Kunhardt
Production companies: Ventana Films
Venue: Cairo Film Festival (Horizons of Arab Cinema)
In Arabic, English
89 minutes
