1984, Kurdish Zeynep visits her husband in prison where she may only speak Turkish—a language she does not know. They nevertheless find a way to communicate, and despite the fact that it is forbidden to bring the inmates anything from the outside, she finds a way of smuggling him in new shoes.

Shot in muted tones, this intimate drama tells of a young woman’s resilience in the face of oppression, speaking to how language is used as a tool in persecution. The second offering in Rezan Yeşilbaş’s Trilogy of Women, Silent won the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival.