Firdaus is a Blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas landscape juxtaposed between glittering casino lights and the deteriorating desert oasis. Negotiating a missing husband and neighboring domestic violence, Firdaus’ world unfolds as a fragmented interplay between repetition and repressed anger.

Awash with striking imagery, Nina Menkes’s indelible portrait of alienated womanhood counters the glitz of nocturnal Las Vegas with its daytime loneliness. Sullenly glamorous, the blood-red claws sported by Tinka Menkes’s croupier evokes a gesture of resistance against the drudgery of casino life.