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Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban is the setting of Cinema Jazireh, Turkish filmmaker Gözde Kural’s second feature. She wrote, directed and also edited, together with Bünyamin Bayansal, the film, which is world premiering in the Crystal Globe Competition of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) on Thursday evening.

“After surviving her family’s massacre, Leila has just one goal in life: to find her son Omid,” says a synopsis. “But in a country where being a woman means being less than nothing, her chances are desperately slim, and so she chooses an extreme and dangerous solution. She radically changes her identity and sets out on a path where even the slightest hesitation can mean death.”

Along the way, viewers meet a range of characters, including a group of people watching a bootleg VHS tape of James Cameron’s Titanic, which a friend...

The threat of death lurks around every corner in Cinema Jazireh, whether in the form of the Taliban or the desert. The second feature from Turkey’s Gözde Kural (Dust) is set in Afghanistan and will world premiere on Thursday as one of the 12 titles in the Crystal Globe Competition of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff).

Produced by Kural, Milad Khosravi, and Bulut Reyhanoğlu, the movie stars Feresteh Hosseini (Parting, Tsunami), Mazlum Sümer, Ali Karimi, Hamid Karimi, Meysam Demanze, and Reza Akhlagrad.

The challenge facing the film’s protagonist is immense. After surviving her family’s massacre, Leila’s only goal in life is to find her son, Omid. “In a country where being a woman means being less than nothing, her chances are desperately slim,” notes a plot description. “Kural applies her familiarity with Afghan society in order to tell a story of oppression.