Review by richardchatten

Described by Noel Burch as "one of the most remarkable community portraits ever filmed", this powerful debut feature made with glacial but passionate elegance by a director still almost unknown in the West would certainly fail the Bechtel Test - despite having an all-female cast - since men are the film's defining absence; a rumbling offscreen presence like the gunfire heard in the closing sequence which combines expressive use both of the camera and the soundtrack.