Rayhana Obermeyer timelessly captures a familiar zeitgeist for women living under repressive regimes. Foregrounding themes including misogyny, honour killings, radicalisation, and under-age marriages, I Still Hide to Smoke paints a complicated picture with hope and humour. For the women in this film, a public bath represents the safest space to share private thoughts and personal victories and even to escape death. The film celebrates the importance of women-only spaces as safety nets, and bases for plotting against any common enemy without cowering to the enemy within – even when violence turns up at the hammam’s doors.

Through its lead character Fatima, the film suggests that idealism, under certain circumstances, is a distraction, and that justice is best served through swift reaction to violence against women. Without doubt, I Still Hide to Smoke is a contemporary epic poem; a vital record of small wins where freedom is a timed luxury. — ADERINSOLA AJAO