Mahmoud Sabbagh’s first feature film, Barakah Meets Barakah, is being touted as the first Saudi Arabian romcom. It opens with a title card that reads: “The pixelisation you see in this film is totally normal. It is not a commentary on censorship. We repeat, it is not a commentary on censorship.”

At first, naturally, I interpreted this as a little ribbing at the religious police who no doubt had to approve the contents of the film. Later, I came to realise this was no boop on the nose. This was a message to the west, played completely straight, expressing how everyday Saudi citizens get by in an oppressive culture.

‘In public, it is virtually impossible for a young woman to strike up a conversation with a man for fear of religious police’ … Barakah Meets Barakah. Photograph: El-Housh Productions

Barakah (Hisham Fageeh) is a good-natured civil servant who rides around Riyadh issuing tickets for minor offences. The streets may belong to God, but that doesn’t mean the greengrocer can hawk his wares without a permit. Meanwhile, in cyberspace, Bibi (Fatima al-Banawi) is using carefully cropped Instagram videos to amass millions of likes for her fashion-forward, eco-friendly and just-shy-of-revolutionary female empowerment messages. Barakah stumbles across one of her shoots and is stricken. Bibi might be stricken, too – but it’s hard to say. In public, it is virtually impossible for a young woman to strike up a conversation with a man for fear of religious police.



Somehow, amid the Margaret Atwood dystopia that is being a woman in Saudi Arabia, Sabbagh keeps the story upbeat. Much of the picture consists of our two leads scheming just to have a face-to-face chat. “I haven’t even held a woman’s hand!” Barakah cries out to his worldly uncle, a Zorba-esque oud player. (Fageeh, a Saudi actor who studied at Columbia University, is 28.) Bibi lives with her wealthy adopted family and spars with her mother, who runs a high-end clothing shop. These sequences have something of a chaste Almódovar quality. Lots of amusing histrionics amid primary colours and extravagant wallpaper.



Things turn political when Barakah begins comparing today’s Saudi culture with that of his uncle’s generation. Looking at old slides, he recounts how men and women used to be able to socialise in public, there were cultural heroes besides imams and the area surrounding the Ka’bah didn’t look like Las Vegas.



A still from Barakah Meets Barakah. Photograph: El-Housh Productions

Surprisingly, this movie made it past the censors. A shot of Bibi’s father pouring himself a drink got blotted out – though only while he was holding it; the brown liquor going into the glass and getting spilled to the floor was OK. Also, Bibi defiantly giving her Instagramming iPhone the middle finger was deemed too provocative. A scene shot in public pulls an inadvertent surprise – the image of a pixellated woman’s face wasn’t done for the camera, that’s what advertising looks like in Riyadh.



Barakah Meets Barakah is fascinating as ethnography. There is very little cinema coming out of Saudi Arabia, our oil-rich ally that sentences citizens with lashings and jail for declaring themselves atheists. The film’s early sequences in Bibi’s family shop feel a bit like community theatre. And there’s a great deal of inelegant dialogue introducing each character and how they fit into the larger story. Still, there’s a great deal of visual sizzle, as well as sadness. When a young girl recognises Bibi and approaches her as a fan (not sure how, as she keeps her face out of her videos) the message is clear: we’re working on it.

