This is a quintessential film festival film. It immerses you into a little known culture (North Ossetia), claustrophobically shows you the grim reality of an abused person (Ada), weaves a metaphor throughout (those clenched fists), and gives you a final act that will leave you confounded, exhilarated and thinking about it long afterwards.

Ada (Milana Aguzarova in her first role) seems like any other teen, albeit one who has a little in her life outside her family. Things aren’t quite normal though and director Kira Kovalenko teases us with the details for a good while. It’s all kept vague but in some way her dad (Alik Karaev) is keeping her confined and trying to stop her growing up. Her younger brother Dakko (Khetag Bibilov) doesn’t want her to leave either and there is a recurring motif of people, men, enclosing her in a grasp that she struggles to extricate herself from.

Ada yearns for older brother Akim (Soslan Khugaev), maybe because of an intense love or because he has done what she can’t, escape. She wants an operation that will make her ‘whole’ but her father won’t allow it. She tries to push away the aggressive advances of delivery man Tamik (Arsen Khetagurov) – another man who traps her in his grasp – but maybe a boyfriend or a fiancé or marriage is a way to escape.

It feels like we are watching a parable about patriarchy. Ada may talk about freedom from family / childhood / abuse but she can’t see any good alternatives out there for her. The problem isn’t her father but the cage she lives in.

The ending is a tonal shift that somehow feels exhilarating after so much close intensity. It resolves nothing but gives us a moment where we hope for more.

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Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts.