From Omeleto.
A friend needs help.
WINDS OF SILENCE is used with permission from Radha Mehta. Learn more at https://southasiansoar.org.
Ziya’s husband has recently died, and her best friend Sunita has come with her family to participate in the scattering of ashes. But Sunita has another agenda: she wants to escape her abusive husband Hamit, and she needs Ziya to provide an excuse to stay another night — and allow Sunita and her family to escape.
Ziya is reluctant, saying Sunita isn’t ready and will put her and her children in a dangerous situation. But as Sunita begs, Ziya must confront her own past before she makes her decision.
Directed and written by Radha Mehta, this elegant, lyrical short drama strips down its narrative to the barest of essentials, as two best friends come together at a critical moment in both of their lives. Ziya has lost her husband, and true to his cruelty during the relationship, he left her with no money. Sunita is still married to her husband, and now that he has started beating their son, she has come to a crucial decision. But to follow through on that choice, she needs Ziya’s help.
The narrative revolves around Ziya’s decision, a delicate but important turning point that’s rendered here in storytelling that is just as intimate and emotional, full as it is with images of nature in transition and the promise of something more beautiful on the horizon. The storytelling is compressed to a few major scenes, the first of which is Sunita’s request of Ziya, conveyed with understated yet wrenching feeling by actors Deepti Gupta and Sohm Kapila as Ziya and Sunita, respectively. A more straightforward story would have used another stepping stone to Ziya’s eventual decision. However, that moment is taken here by a scene between Ziya’s daughter and Sunita’s son, who have wandered off together and eventually discuss what life is like without a father.
It’s a small but touching scene, delicately restrained but still poignantly eloquent. By reminding us of a child’s perspective, the film frames Ziya’s decision as not just about her past or Sunita’s present, but the children’s future. What they grow up with, what they observe: once Ziya becomes aware that the children know what’s going on, she realizes that a pattern must be broken for her and Sunita’s children to have better futures — and it starts with the consequential choice of helping Sunita.
When Sunita’s husband arrives on the scene, there is no dramatic confrontation or hair-raising specter of violence to bring the film to a close. Instead, WINDS OF SILENCE — made with the support of South Asian SOAR, a group that aims to end gender-based violence in the South Asian diaspora — ends with a reminder of the prevalence of domestic violence in its community and the quiet but immense courage it takes to break these patterns. There is a sense of two women in solidarity, facing the future together: uncertain yet strong in the conviction that the doubts of the future are better than the terror of the present.
