Five Flavors Festival: The shape of momo

TypeHall 1 - Cinema

Hour

21.11

|

January 11 |

NEW ASIAN CINEMA

There is no other culture so ambivalent in its approach to femininity than the Hindu one. On the one hand, the woman is the embodiment of shakti — divine power and the personification of the Great Goddess, on the other — a being completely subordinate to man. A woman is supposed to be like a momo dumpling — with a beautiful shape and a well-arranged interior. Just as a cake can be molded into a certain shape, society wants to create a woman cut according to a certain pattern, defined by the archetypes of goddesses and heroines of epics with Sita at the head. Meanwhile, Bishnu returns from Delhi to his native Sikkim at the foot of the Himalayas, to a home full of women, bringing with him a metropolitan rebellion against patriarchal norms that are still well in the province.

-- [Color frame from the movie. A woman, curled up in an embryonic position on a rock. In the background, water with a rocky bottom.]

He wants to interrupt the generational march of those who humbly submitted to tradition and lived in the belief that the birth of a girl was the result of a curse. In her feature debut Tribeny, Rai shows a male world in which women negotiate the limits of their own freedom and independence in different ways. It is a world as harsh as the nature of the Himalayas, among which the Bishnu family came to live. The beauty of the mountains surrounding her family home is stunning, but it also breeds a sense of isolation and closure — literally and metaphorically. (Blanka K. Jugai)

Language: Nepali with Polish and English subtitles

THE SHAPE OF MOMO, dir. Tribeny Rai, India 2025, 114'

--For whom: youth, adults

Venue: Sala 1 - Kinowa

tickets: 27 zł (n), 25 zł (u), 22 zł (with Kinomana Card)