BAL MAIDEN | Omeleto

Two women escape.


BAL MAIDEN is used with permission from Aella Jordan-Edge. Learn more at https://aellajordanedge.com.


In an 18th-century tin mining community on the Cornish coast in southwest England, Ruth and Loveday work together as "bal maidens," female manual laborers working above ground to crush and sort ore. It's hard work, and they're often subject to the advances and abuse of the miners -- something that haunts Ruth.

When a miner attacks Loveday, Ruth and Loveday fight their way out, but unexpected events force them to flee the community. But escape doesn't come easy, as they come face to face with the unfathomability of the mines themselves.

Directed by Aella Jordan-Edge and co-written with Amy Tattersall White, this powerfully realized short historical drama centers on the intertwined fates of two young women -- isolated, vulnerable, and trapped in lives defined by hardship and abuse. Shot on 35mm film, its varnished, weathered visuals evoke the grit and harsh edges of a fascinating historical milieu, unspooling a spellbinding, darkly hypnotic tale of power and retribution.

Sparse yet evocative in dialogue, the film is notable for its weathered, evocative visual beauty, its cinematography imbuing the world with a textured, almost tangible weight: the miners’ cold stone walls, the cramped interiors, the looming specter of danger. It's both a brutal and poetic visual approach, befitting the story of two women grappling with having no power or safety in a profoundly deprived and dangerous world.

But Ruth and Loveday have one another, and though both women are quite different -- Ruth is wary and defensive, Loveday softer and more innocent. But when Ruth helps Loveday extricate herself from a terrible situation, fate throws them even more closely together. As Ruth and Loveday, actors Abigail Lawrie and Liv Hill, respectively, give deeply affecting performances, capturing a kind of quiet desperation but also simmering with untapped strength and power. Even within their restrictive circumstances, they find a way to grapple with the threats to their lives, but their agency is not without its costs or consequences.

How Ruth and Loveday work through these obstacles on their path to freedom is darkly surprising, spooky and memorably chilling, bringing BAL MAIDEN to its haunting conclusion. By the film's end, viewers will have felt transported to a different time and place and perhaps learned more about these unacknowledged laborers and the harsh conditions they endured. It's a world and idea that would merit expansion into a larger narrative, and it makes for a powerful, elegiac cinematic experience: historically rooted yet emotionally modern, visually rich, and deeply humane.