Director: Milena Aboyan

Stars: Bayan Layla, Derya Durmaz, Nazmi Kirik, Armin Wahedi, Slavko Popadic, Réber Ibrahim

The debut feature from writer-director Milena Aboyan is an impressive and commendably nuanced feminist drama. Bayan Layla is the titular character, a modern twenty-two-year-old German-Kurdish woman who is about to be married to the more traditional Nasim (Wahedi). She lives with her watchful mother (Durmaz), downtrodden dad (Kirik) who is struggling to get a job, and her little brother Sami. Elaha works at a laundry during the day, and in her downtime, she occasionally sneaks away to go dancing with her friends, or to visit sensitive ex-con Yusuf (Popadic), a man she met at her citizenship education classes and with whom she has a platonic relationship. Elaha is agonizing over the decision to have hymen replacement surgery to convince her fiancé’s family that she is a virgin and not a ‘slut’ as Nasim would have it, but she is struggling to raise the cost. Aboyan elegantly sketches out her various female characters via how they choose to navigate their oppressive patriarchal environment. The male characters are afforded a fair hearing too, even the gruff Nasim is more tradition-bound manchild than real antagonist. Layla delivers a career-making performance, as Elaha, struggling between a genuine love for her family and the need to make her own way. The final sequence, rendered in dazzling white and blue by cinematographer Christopher Behrmann, is open-ended but feels tentatively hopeful too.

David Willoughby

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