Bayan Layla, Hadnet Tesfai, Derya Durmaz
Beautiful, lively young Elaha (the charismatic Bayan Layla) faces a dilemma just weeks away from her wedding in writer-director Milena Aboyan’s feature debut, a nuanced and poignant drama about patriarchy, sexuality and self-determination.
Elaha is part of a tight-knit German-Kurdish community. Everyone lives in the same neighbourhood and knows each other’s business, making secrets very hard to keep and the avoidance of shame crucial. All minds are on Elaha’s upcoming wedding to Nasim (Armin Wahedi), but she has a problem she must solve: she is no longer a virgin, a state of ‘honour’ considered a cardinal value by her community and, more specifically, by her strict mother (Derya Durmaz). Is there a way she can feign her virginity?
Carefully and intelligently, Aboyan explores the weight of the ties that bind Elaha, a young woman on an increasingly desperate quest to unify her allegiance to Kurdish cultural traditions with her instinctively modern self.
