Elaha (15)

Germany | 2024 | 110’ | 15 | Milena Aboyan | German and Kurdish with English subtitles

Bayan Layla, Hadnet Tesfai, Derya Durmaz, Armin Wahedi

Beautiful, lively 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. All eyes are on Elaha’s upcoming wedding to Nasim, 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. 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 in this nuanced and poignant drama about the patriarchy, sexuality and self-determination.