CN: Thematization of violence and suicide
Zahra wanted to study in the big city for a better life. As a member of the Hazara minority in Afghanistan, she moved to Kabul – and never returned. The circumstances of her suicide remain unclear, but it is certain that she suffered from immense pressure and from a professor who rejected her final papers one after the other. Her family, especially her sister Freshta, questions the reasons for her death and embarks on the difficult fight for legal justice. Time and again, the family’s simple life in the mountains clashes with a hostile environment, for example, when the father is required to appear at a hearing in Kabul the next day – a journey of several days on unpaved roads, through deep snow, with the constant threat of Taliban ambushes. Told in striking images and partly as an internal dialogue between Freshta and her deceased sister, the film opens several layers: the historical oppression of the Hazara people since the late 19th century, the unresolved death of a young student, and the family’s way of dealing with the tragic loss of a daughter and sister. (Anja Klauck)