Zamira is fes­tive­ly attired, singing in a choir. A line from a love song poses the ques­tion “What is my pur­pose in life here on earth?”, becom­ing the guid­ing theme of the film. Zamira’s daugh­ter Sabina asks it of her mother; she asks it of the public behind the camera – and of herself.
The ques­tion is not meant to be reli­gious, nor moral­is­tic, but ana­lyt­i­cal and reveal­ing, and Sabina metic­u­lous­ly lists all the unspo­ken, con­tra­dic­to­ry and misog­y­nis­tic things she per­ceived grow­ing up as a girl in Uzbek­istan. Pow­er­ful, deform­ing, accept­ed – naked truths hang in the air that women live in. The ques­tion is not answered; the film fol­lows a dif­fer­ent track: the daugh­ter accom­pa­nies her mother through every­day life and a nar­ra­tive unfolds where obser­va­tions con­tra­dict what has been said. It seems pos­si­ble to make your­self happy, to counter the social impo­si­tions with other images, to show solidarity.

Sabina Bakae­va’s debut film, made in a work­shop at Tashkent Film School, is an open, coura­geous por­trait of women and an unadorned jour­ney through the expe­ri­ences of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions of Uzbek women. (Berli­nale 2025)