‘Hijra’ review: Family bonds are tested when a teenage girl vanishes in accomplished Saudi drama

Dir/scr: Shahad Ameen. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, UK. 2025. 105 minutes.

A pilgrimage to Mecca for 12-year-old Janna (Lamar Faden) and her extreme, intractable grandmother Sitti (Khairiah Nathmy) is abruptly diverted when Janna’s 18-year-old sister Sara vanishes en route. Janna and her grandmother embark on an more and more pressing journey, traversing Saudi Arabia to succeed in the far-flung border areas within the hope of intercepting Sara earlier than the ladies’ father learns of her disappearance. 

Assured and handsomely-shot

Some pretty blunt symbolism and an inconclusive ending however, that is an achieved and bold image from Shahad Ameen that’s distinctive for its predominantly female-led story, its deal with the nation’s cultural range and hanging use of the inhospitable Saudi panorama. 

The movie marks a return to Venice (the place it performs in Highlight) for author and director Shahad Ameen: her well-regarded sci-fi fantasy debut function, Scales, premiered there in 2019, the place it picked up the primary of a number of prizes (it additionally took dwelling gongs from Carthage, Singapore and Sydney Science Fiction Movie Competition). Scales went on to be the Saudi official submission to the Greatest Worldwide Function Movie class of the 2021 Academy Awards. A assured and handsomely-shot image, Hijra ought to, on the very least, match Scales’ wholesome pageant run.

From the outset, it’s clear that Ameen has a watch for hanging compositions. Crammed right into a minibus with fellow devotees (all girls, dressed both in extreme black or purest white), Janna is bored. Her grandmother attracts the window curtain emphatically, however there’s a chink by means of which Janna can nonetheless see the world exterior. Ameen creates a body throughout the body, giving us a way of stolen glimpses of one thing forbidden. And naturally, something forbidden feels all of the extra thrilling. 

Janna, baby-faced and naïve, is just too younger to insurgent towards her household. Sara, nonetheless, has already pushed again towards the authority of her elders. When she vanishes, the primary suspicion is that she has contacted her aunt, who, since she left her husband and took a job as a hairdresser, is thought to be one thing of a household scandal. There’s a boyfriend too, a relationship that was torpedoed by her household however which Sara hasn’t given up on. 

The pair dealer a raise with Ahmed, a captivating chancer who sells what he claims is Zamzam holy water to pilgrims. When Sitti sternly factors out that she noticed him filling his bottles from a roadside faucet, their association is terminated and grandmother and granddaughter are left by the highway to haul the bags by hand. The large open Saudi horizons have hardly ever seemed so intimidatingly huge and empty as they do with a small little one and a frail outdated lady plodding throughout them.

Like Tawfik Alzaidi’s 2023 melodrama Norah, the movie was partly shot within the spectacular AlUla area. The savage drama of the mountain and desert backdrop emphasises the vulnerability of Janna and Sitti. Nevertheless it additionally brings them collectively, with Sitti sharing her knowledge on star navigation and fire-making.

An incident with a camel reunites the pair with Ahmed, and delivers the image’s clunkiest metaphor. Janna releases the livid animal from its hobble, whereupon it makes a break for freedom and is promptly mowed down by a automobile. Escape comes at a value, clearly. And simply in case we hadn’t made the hyperlink with Sara, Janna mentions her sister pointedly on the finish of the scene. 

Extra efficiently explored are the themes of migration and the wealthy cultural mixture of Saudi Arabia. Sitti just isn’t Saudi by delivery, however arrived within the nation along with her father on a pilgrimage and stayed on after his demise. Of, we assume, Pakistani origin (he speaks Urdu), Ahmed was born in Saudi Arabia, however like his father earlier than him, he doesn’t have citizenship and wishes the backing of a sponsor with a purpose to keep. His precarious standing mirrors that of Sitti, and different girls, whose quiet energy and resilience present the backbone of the story.