This evocative and introspective film brings light to the Albanian tradition of the sworn virgin. This practice allowed many women to break free from the ‘prescribed roles’ and take on another set of gender roles. Alba Rohrwacher, who plays as Hana and Mark within the film, delivers a nuanced and powerful performance as a woman whose gender isn’t as easily defined as the world expects it to be. In a Hollywood Reporter article, Deborah Young (2015) says the movie is “Structured as a series of flashbacks, the story jumps from subsistence-level living in the snowy highlands of Albania to the greater freedom of a modern Italian city”. For so long, Hana was trapped in the life that she was except to live. The snow and mountains represents the
