YELLOW | Omeleto

A woman goes shopping.


YELLOW is used with permission from Elham Ehsas. Learn more at https://elhame.co.


Set against the backdrop of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Laili is an intelligent young Afghan woman who has never before worn the chadari, or the full-body veil. But the Taliban now control Afghanistan and have issued a decree that all women must wear the chadari, so Laili must visit a shop in Kabul to purchase one.

At the store, she encounters a shopkeeper, who assists her with her purchase. Within this exchange, Laili faces the restrictive situation she must adapt to, forcing her to confront a new future.

Directed and written by Elham Ehsas -- who also plays the shopkeeper -- this subtle and powerful short drama takes an ordinary encounter between a young woman and a shopkeeper as a lens to explore the uncertain plight of Afghan women under the Taliban regime, which came back to power in 2021 and banned women from going to school or university, among other edicts. The Taliban also decreed that all women adopt the full-body veil, turning them into sometimes eerie, spectral presences in their country's public life. That transfiguration is the axis of this empathetic narrative, as Laili reckons matter-of-factly with this change in her life.

Visually both artful and richly naturalistic, it opens with scenes of lively street life in Kabul, though the camera is careful to note the presence of women in chadari, silent and often still. Laili is almost an unobtrusive presence on the street, coming into focus only when she enters the shop. Curious about the veils hanging on the wall, she then hears the sound of now forbidden music, played by a young shopkeeper oblivious to her presence. After being chided by his father to stop, he steps out to assist Laili.

At first, their exchange is strictly mercantile, but as they talk, there is a growing warmth and connection, a genuine chemistry that injects warmth and humor into the film. The storytelling's elegant sense of observation is alert to the unspoken subtexts running underneath the quotidian conversation. Played with an innate intelligence and radiance by actor Afsaneh Dehrouyeh, Laili is melancholic about the need to purchase the chadori, her offhand comments about colors in English revealing an innate intellectual curiosity. She and the shopkeeper find humor in how difficult it is to put on the chardori and how difficult it is to see, but even that humor shifts as Laili realizes how hampered she will be in her moments and vision in her daily life -- and how little choice she will have in the matter of wearing it.

Finding poetry in the ordinary and how enjoyment and oppression nestle side by side in everyday life, the BAFTA-nominated YELLOW works beautifully in pointing out how even the most intimate, mundane details of life are affected by changing political winds. Yet the final movements of the film feature Laili twirling in a dance in front of the mirror, as if even the cumbersome chadori cannot quite quench her spirit. There is ambivalence and a wistful solemnity in the shopkeeper's reactions as he observes her, as well as in the film as it closes on Laili pulling the chadori over her face in resignation. It's as if he -- and the viewers -- sense what is lost when women disappear from the culture at large. With the plight of an estimated 14 million Afghan women all but invisible in our tumultuous news cycles, YELLOW does not forget -- and gently asks us not to forget as well.