WINNER: Jury Award for Best Feature Film, Ortigia Film Festival
             New Director’s Prize, San Francisco International Film Festival
             Nora Ephron Prize, Tribeca Film Festival

“Laura Bispuri's debut feature is a solemn, sensitive study of transgender reversal. ­ Guy Lodge, Variety.

As a young woman living within the confines of a Northern Albanian village, Hana longs to escape the shackles of womanhood, and live her life as a man. To do so she must evoke an old law of the Kanun and take an oath to eternally remain a virgin. Years later, as Mark, she leaves home for the first time and travels to Italy to stay with her sister, crossing over into a world unlike anything she has known before. There, she discovers herself again, leading her to contemplate the possibility of undoing the vow she made so long ago.

Director Laura Bispuri’s debut feature is an evocative and introspective film that brings light to the centuries­long Albanian tradition of the sworn virgin, or burrnesha. Bispuri delicately navigates Hana’s story, giving articular attention to mood, and lead actress Alba Rohrwacher delivers a nuanced and powerful performance as a woman whose gender isn’t as easily defined as the world expects it to be.

Geoffrey Gilmore
Tribeca Film Festival