Love and Broken Glass

Thirteen-year old Gulu and her friends are primarily interested in pop music and boys. She dreams that some boy from her neighbourhood will fall for her and that they will experience a life of true love together. The reality, however, is different. The girls are living in Kyrgyzstan, a country where tradition decrees that a man can pick any single woman and simply take her back to his home and marry her. Even though times are changing, this was common practice for a generation of Kyrgyz mothers and grandmothers. The life of the young Gulu is interlaced with the story of an old Kyrgyz woman, who spent her whole life with an unwanted husband, whom she only found out was an alcoholic after they were married. While Gulu and her friends play at being action warriors on the roofs of panelled concrete apartment blocks, the woman dressed in a brown dress recounts her life as though it blends in with the traditional hanging carpet that decorates her sad home. The director, cameraman and editor Suvi Andrea Helminen focuses in detail on the impossibility of free choice and the theme of female slavery, while showing how deeply these ideas are rooted in Kyrgyz culture.