The Kanun laws have served for more than five hundred years as the fundamental canon of social behavior and self-administration for the clans of northern Albania. The Kanun itself shows how the legal and institutional tradition of the Albanian people has been constructed over the centuries. The rules and norms of the Kanun continue to exert a strong influence among both Albanians living in Albania and those who have migrated to other countries.

Mountains of Albania. Hana Doda has a sister to whom she is very close; the two teenagers love to get lost in the snowy mountains, tinkering with rifles while questioning the Albanian customary code, which deals with civil and criminal law by regulating numerous aspects such as family, marriage, contracts, labor, property, infamous crimes, and compensation for damages.

The Kanun code also recites these rules with respect to female behavior:

It is not good to drink before a man drinks

It is not good to smoke

It is not good to sling a gun

It is not good to speak before a man speaks

Nor go alone in the woods without a man

It is not good to choose a husband

It is not good to do men's work

It is not good to look at a man thinking he is not right

It is not good to choose before a man chooses

The mother reminds the two young women of these rules, and Hana's sister is betrothed to a man she does not want while she loves another with whom she will run away.

The position that the Kanun assigned to women was one of absolute subservience to men in the family as well as in society. With the marriage, the bride's father would hand over, along with the agreed-upon trousseau, a bullet as a symbol of the absolute power vested in the future husband. The latter would even be allowed to kill his own wife in case of serious betrayal, adultery and disrespect of the host, without incurring the vengeance of her family. Marriage "with proof" was also permissible in Kanun: the husband would take the woman home with him for a year, and if the woman during this period failed to carry a pregnancy to a successful conclusion, the marriage was to be considered dissolved. The husband could keep the woman with him out of pity, but he would regain the right to remarry.

Hana, left alone, was left with only her uncle's proposal: to become a sworn virgin.

To act freely as a man by renouncing her female gender identity, first and foremost the exercise of sexuality. By swearing eternal virginity she will consecrate her body to the male cause.

The Kanun also recognized a special right of women, namely that of proclaiming themselves as men. These women were referred to as the so-called "Albanian virgins" who wore, as a distinguishing feature, masculine clothing. The virgin in the Kanun arose from a social need. According to the Kanun, if the patriarchs of the family died and the family was left without a male heir, the unmarried woman of the family could immediately find herself alone and very powerful. By taking the oath of virginity, the woman could assume the role of a man, as head of the family, could hold the weapon, gain property and move freely. Sworn virgins were patriarchs of their own family, with all the trappings of male authority, having sworn to remain virgins for the rest of their lives.

In fact, these girls had taken a special oath at a sacred ceremony in which they pledged their state of virginity before the twelve most important men in the village. After the oath, the maiden assumed masculine behavior, took a man's name, armed herself, and was allowed to smoke, drink, and eat with men where women were not allowed. She also acquired the right to sell, buy and manage property, could participate in warfare and vendettas among clans of equal rights to other men.

To Mark's new guise, Hana will adapt her slender, mortified body, but something final has not been accomplished, and the nature of a free creature will not be able to quell the dizziness of her instincts and her infinite possibilities.

A poetic and rough film recounts the unfathomable complexity of the planet woman; a fragment of female love discourse, represented in its multiple dimensions and contradictions, through an x-ray of the body, and its reasons, that is both heartbreaking and highly lucid.

Access to the masculine world requires the sacrifice of the female body both in excess and in defect, always in the misrecognition of the individual woman who is asked to take away free and unconditional pleasure by virtue of acquiring a name sacred to the masculine insofar as the feminine can only be profane.

A symbolic image of a general condition, a story that is a metaphor for the still highly conflicted relationship between female reality and the world. There is always a Kanun code present, in every actuality even and especially when we do not realize it...only the body continues to speak and send signals, and stubbornly not reading them is a symptom of the oath to a virginity incapable of understanding human complexity.

A film that pains, that urges a double gaze.

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice