An intermingling of folkloric traditions and speculative futures, Woo Jing Min’s Stone Turtle is a revenge story that unfolds in a place of beauty and desolation. After the ‘honor killing’ of her sister, Zahara (Asmara Abigail) must take responsibility for her ten-year-old niece, Nika. The pair live on a nearly uninhabited island where Zahara, determined to enroll Nika in a school on the mainland, generates their income from the illegal turtle egg trade. When a strange visitor, Samad, arrives on the island, Zahara’s feminist vengeance is unleashed in a daze of déjà vu. Whether a stoned memory or a product of hallucinative myth, this Malaysian film is unique and engaging in its use of diverse media, such as cartoons and animation, and in the way it moves through the drama like a dancer, navigating a whirlwind of warring emotions while playing with genre and narrative expectations. (Müge Turan)

Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds