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Who encouraged you to go into films?

My parents were very liberal. They never put limits on us but provided the shelter for us to grow up without giving in to social pressure. Saudi Arabia is very conservative and tribal. Men are supposed to be the gatekeepers of honour. People would write to my father telling him not to let his daughter go on TV, but he never listened. He wanted his daughters to achieve whatever they wanted in life, and that is rare in Saudi Arabia. No one would come to our house because we were secular people. Now I appreciate it a lot, but during my teen years I always felt like an outsider.

Is there a particular power in telling a story through the eyes of a child?

Children ask very simple questions that make us rethink the basics of right and wrong. You become part of the system when you grow up. You lose the ability to question and wonder. The actress who plays Wadjda comes from a conservative family which has told her she can act only until she is 16. That is quite lenient. Sometimes they allow girls [to act] only until they are 13, or until they look like a woman. I am hoping after 16 she will take over and they won't be able to stop her. A lot of my childhood friends were married off after high school even though some of them had great potential to be leaders. I feel like this film is for them.

Why did you choose a bicycle as the object of Wadjda's desires?

I wanted it to be a simple story. The bicycle is a metaphor for freedom of movement that does not exist for women and girls in Saudi Arabia. If I want to go anywhere, I need permission. I cannot drive a car or walk, or even take a train without family permission. I wanted the acceleration of the bike to give life to that intellectual debate and make people understand that it is only movement.

Wadjda is the first feature film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia. Was it a challenge to build a production crew?

It is not easy to be a woman in charge. Because I am young and a woman and an Arab, people always question me, but by the middle of the shooting we all came to an understanding. I also gained the support of Prince Al Waleed bin Talal and I was incredibly lucky to have producers who were willing to think out of the box and stand by me, even if that led them into the heart of one of the strangest and most challenging places on Earth to make a movie. People are still reluctant to change but the mere fact that this has been filmed in Saudi Arabia shows that society is opening up.

Is the Middle East's identity in transition?

People are excited to see change happening in the Arab world because it has been very still. Nothing was changing. But I think everyone is concerned at the same time because it is difficult to change systems, and revolutions are sometime not what people expect.

In Saudi Arabia public cinema is banned. Does film help to build pressure for change?

Liberal arts should play a greater role in shaping the Arab nations. We see rising fundamentalist and conservative ideologies in Egypt and Tunisia, and we need to create space for arts to grow and call for higher human values such as tolerance, acceptance and rights. Activists tend to work against the system but I really want to work within it. A lot of people in Saudi Arabia are against a female film director voicing her opinion, but I still feel they respect me because I work within some sort of system. I don't try to push against it as much as create a dialogue. Conservative societies shut off when their values are threatened. We should create a space where they can feel part of the world, not outside it.